Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a cheeky chatterer, thus a gossip.

1523		Skelton Garlande or Chapelet of Laurell 1262: For the gyse nowadays Of sum jangelyng jays Is to discommende That they cannot amende.
1849		Sam Sly 2 June 4/2: Oh! have you heard the row of late / Between two jays, who could not wait / A reasonable decent time / To get rid of their daughters fine!
1906		S. Ford Shorty McCabe 101: With that Sir Peter [...] cuts adrift on the railroad business. That made the boss kind of sick at first. [...] But there wasn’t any shuttin’ the old jay off.

2. a showy woman, a prostitute [later use is US, mostly black].

c.1597		Shakespeare Merry Wives of Windsor III iii: We’ll teach him to know turtles from jays.
1610		Shakespeare Cymbeline III iv: Some jay of Italy, Whose mother was her painting, hath betray’d him.
1629		Ford Broken Heart II i: How they flutter, Wagtails and jays together.
1831		Satirist (London) 7 Aug. 141/2: A jay...Lady Gwydyr.
1915		M.G. Hayden ‘Terms Of Disparagement’ in DN IV:iii 197: jay, a simple, frivolous person. ‘Isn’t she a jay? She doesn’t act like a mother at all.’.
1951		(con. 1880s) S. Longstreet Pedlocks (1971) 73: No, Madam King, that jaybird, doesn’t give that kind of service.’ ‘Don’t knock. Some of my best friends are madams.’.

3. (US campus) a person who does something disagreeable or foolish.

1893		S. Crane Maggie, a Girl of the Streets (2001) 36: I’ll kill deh jay! Dat’s what I’ll do! I’ll kill deh jay!
1900		E.H. Babbitt ‘College Words and Phrases’ in DN II:i 43: jay, n. A person who does something disagreeable or foolish.
1910		‘Doss Chiderdoss’ ‘The Sweetshop Girl’ Sporting Times 5 Mar. 1/4: As far as I can size it up, she is no piecan, / It’s the dude who gives her presents who’s the Jay.
1913		Truth (Sydney) 25 May 11/3: He’s a bundle needs some cleanin’ / For he’ dirty anyway, / And he are a lively jay-bird, / Living in a swagger way,.
1921		Coshocton (OH) Trib. 23 Jan. 2/3: Nowadays we all believe in ashooting laws at every ‘jay.’.

4. (orig. US, also J) a rustic, a simpleton, a novice, a newcomer; however note juggins n. (1), esp. for UK cites from late 19C.

1881		Daily L.A. Herald 13 Aug. 2/3: He would with the peerless pair by calling them ‘jays’ [...] or ‘ranks,’ or perhaps ‘hams’.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 28 Feb. 22/3: The Jay selected should, if possible, be a stout, prosperous, credulous old buck, with two or more chins, and a rich, jingling walk.
1887		‘’Arry on His Critics’ in Punch 17 Dec. 280/1: He isn’t no J, that’s a moral.
1887		Shields Dly Gaz. 24 Dec. 6/5: You are a nice old jay to talk about telling the truth, you are.
1890		‘Dagonet’ ‘The Rondeau of the Knock’ in Referee 20 Apr. 7: Stripped of his plumes a poor denuded J / He took the knock!
1891		Sporting Times 7 Mar. 1/3: But I happened to meet with a first class J / [...] / I was on him at easy range.
1892		E.E. Rogers [perf. Marie Lloyd] G’arn Away 🎵 Just because I’m a flimy girl yer takes me for a Jay.
1893		St Louis Post-Dispatch (MO) 3 Dec. 17/7: [A] ‘jay’ [is] synonymous with farmer and ‘gilly’ .
1896		Coburg Leader (Vic.) 18 Jan. 4/1: Lord Arthur is a howling jay / So say all of us / And in that hat he looks as if / He’s just fell off a bus.
1898		Binstead & Wells Pink ’Un and Pelican 192: Certainly he threw one instantaneous glance at The Partner [...] but it was all too quick for the ‘jay’s’ eyes.
1900		H.B. Norris [perf. Vesta Tilley] Burlington Bertie 🎵 Burlington Bertie’s the latest young jay.
1902		Ade Forty Modern Fables 226: [The] City Grafter decided that he would go out among the Jays and try to scare up two or three Green Wrappers for his rapidly diminishing Roll.
1904		Sun. Times (Perth) 25 Sept. 4/7: And hopes the chorus clyners who attract the gilded jay / Will find the steps to Sheol steep and greasy.
1905		Illus. Police News 30 Dec. 6/4: I’m sorry to say, I’ve been had for a ‘jay,’ / Which, translated, would signify fool.
1911		Truth (Perth) 18 Feb. 8/6: Well, this Jay I was remarking, / He do make the money move.
1912		E. Pugh City Of The World 238: When I’m there I can’t think straight, and that makes me look a jay.
1913–14		Van Loan ‘Easy Picking’ in Taking the Count 298: It was hard work to conceal his contempt for these ‘small-town jays.’.
1915		Drew & Evans Grafter (1922) 4: ‘[Y]ou’ll have to get to work on that [betting] ticket [...] A Jay’s got it, and it will be dead easy’.
1924		F.P. Adams So Much Velvet 55: ‘I think you’re a hick and a jay!’ I don’t care a cuss what you think.
1936		R.F. Adams Cowboy Lingo 197: A rustic was referred to as a ‘sunpecked jay’.
1940		W.E. Wilson Wabash 187: Dunn, the historian [...] says that ‘hoosier’ was a slang word once used in the South to denote a ‘jay’ or ‘hayseed’.
1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 110/1: Jay. [...] 2. Variant of John or Square-John.
1972		(con. 1930s) N. Algren ‘The Last Carousel’ from Playboy in Texas Stories (1995) 139: That’s the way we flap the jays.
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 193: Unintelligent synonyms for hick include: booby, clown, jay, loon, lout, swede, and yokel.