yellow jack

American  

noun

yellow jack, plural yellow jacks plural

1. Informal. quarantine flag.

2. Pathology. yellow fever.

3. any carangoid fish, especially a Caribbean food fish, Caranx bartholomaei.

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yellow jack British  

noun

1. pathol another name for yellow fever

2. another name for quarantine flag

3. any of certain large yellowish carangid food fishes, esp Caranx bartholomaei, of warm and tropical Atlantic waters

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• yellow jack
  plural
• yellow jacks
  plural

Etymology

Origin of yellow jack

An Americanism dating back to 1830–40

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

yellow jack

But after performing an autopsy on the last man to die, he thought of yellow jack.

From Time Magazine Archive

Dr. Carroll caught yellow jack from one of the Finlay mosquitoes.

From Time Magazine Archive

But all the time yellow jack was lurking in the jungles.

From Time Magazine Archive

When only the two soldiers who were bitten by mosquitoes contracted yellow jack, it amounted to Science's first important victory over yellow fever, the beginning of the final extermination of that plague.

From Time Magazine Archive

We had not been there long, when yellow jack, as the yellow fever is called, made its appearance, both at Kingston and Port Royal, and all visits to the shore were prohibited.

From Marmaduke Merry A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days by Kingston, William Henry Giles