Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a euph. for by Jesus! also intensified as by the living jingo!

1663		A. Cowley Cutter of Coleman-street (1721) 775: Hey, Boys – Gingo.
1691–2		Gentleman’s Journal Feb. 24: Hye, jingo, what a deel’s the matter [F&H].
1707		Cibber Double Gallant V i: By Gingo, Captain, but I won’t —.
1741		Richardson Memoirs of the Life of Lady H 14: By jingo, Girl, I’d have you take care of yourself.
1764		K. O’Hara Midas III ii: By jingo! well performed for one of his age.
1766		O. Goldsmith Vicar of Wakefield (1883) 56: By the living jingo, she was all of a muck of sweat.
1778		F. Burney Evelina (1861) 452: By Jingo, it has served me for a most excellent joke ever since.
1784		Reading Mercury 3 May 4/2: What! a bribe —out of my stall or by gingo I’ll stick my awl to the head in your —.
1787		R. Tyler Contrast II:2: By the living jingo, I had a month’s mind to buss her.
1788		J. O’Keeffe Farmer 17: Just as your Country Folks [swear] ‘Odibodikins’ ‘Gadzookens’ and ‘by the living Jingo’.
1801		M. Edgeworth Belinda (1994) 94: We shall be at dinner as soon as the best of ’em after all, by jingo.
1815		T. Whittell ‘The Quayside Shaver’ Poetical Works 185: At last of wine they weary grew, / They swore, by jingo, ’twas too new.
1829		N.-Y. Eve. Post 8 Jan. 2/4–5: Says I, Tom, says I, by the Lord Harry its only 2 o’clock, and we ha’nt had our spree half out yet. Less blow it out again. ‘Agreed by jingo,’ says he, — and so we started off.
1830		J. Galt Lawrie Todd I Pt II 92: [The] blacksmith [...] offered me two hundred and fifty dollars – gospel, by the living jingo!
1833		S. Smith Major Downing (1834) 63: Jingoe!
1835		‘Lady’s Front’ Knowing Chaunter 6: Why, Jenny, by Jingo, betwixt your two thighs, / Egad I have found your long lost hairy front!
1844		‘Jonathan Slick’ High Life in N.Y. I 45: By the living jingo! how it makes the blood bile and tingle.
1844		J.W. Kaye Peregrine Pultuney I 35: ‘By the living jingo [...] if Mother Radix were to see you’ .
1845		Manchester Times 24 May 2/5: Tom’s noan ov givvin in soart — iv ee gets howd by gingo he’l stik.
1845		J.F. Cooper Satanstoe I 68: ‘Buttermilk, by Jingo,’ exclaimed the disappointed pedagogue. Saint Jingo was the only saint, and a ‘darnation,’ or ‘darn you,’ were the only oaths, his puritan education ever allowed him to use.
1853		N.Y. Clipper 2 July 1/2: ‘By jing, Ma [...] Pa says I’m a roarer so I shall go out’.
1857		Argus (Melbourne) 24 Mar. 6/7: The hon. Baronet also adorned his so-called lecture with such choice phrases as ‘lingo,’ ‘jingo,’ ‘a brick of a Governor,’ and various other specimens of slang phraseology.
1858		A. Mayhew Paved with Gold 398: By jingo! if the rogues see this, it ought to make them tremble in their confounded boots.
1859		‘Timothy Titcomb’ Letters to Young People 141: If a young man should ‘kind o’ shine up to you,’ and you should ‘cotton to him,’ and he should hear you say ‘by the jumping Moses,’ or ‘by the living jingo,’ [...] he would pretty certainly ‘evaporate.’.
1861		Vanity Fair (N.Y.) 9 Nov. 216: Kinchins and cullies, all must have their bingo, / Keep the lush from them and they’ll lope, by jingo!
1864		Derby Day 68: By jingoes! it’s Tony Rous.
1869		Democratic Press (Ravenna, OH) 27 May 1/3: ‘Let’s raise the ante to twenty dollars,’ said Sparks [...] ‘Jingo! it’s too much! You’ll bust me!’ exclaimed Brown.
1874		‘Old Calabar’ Won in a Canter I 53: ‘By Jingo!’ burst out a score of voices; ‘then he is in England’.
1875		‘Aliph Cheem’ Lays of Ind (1905) 83: ‘Diddled, by Jingo! Done to a turn!’.
1875		Auckland Eve. Star (Supp.) 30 Oct. 6/2: And by the whatshisname Jingo, before you can say Jack Robinson, she plumps down all her back-hair on my cambric front.
1876		(con. c.1840) ‘Mark Twain’ Tom Sawyer 211: I’ll foller him; I will, by jingoes!
1877		J. Greenwood Dick Temple III 212: ‘By the living Jingo!’ he exclaimed.
1882		E.S. Ellis Huge Hunter in Beadle’s Half Dime Library XI:271 5/2: Jingo!
1883		J. Hay Bread-Winners (1884) 232: By jingo! it wasn’t half a flash before another fellow slapped him.
1890		‘’Arry on Equality’ Punch 22 Feb. 85/2: When Science and Saintship shake hands, in a sperret of sound common sense, / To chuck over the cant of the Pulpit, by Jingo, old pal, it’s Himmense!
1899		A.C. Gunter M.S. Bradford Special 34: By the living Jingo, Renton!
1903		‘Dads Wayback’ in Sun. Times (Sydney) 19 July 3/3: ‘Make rain,’ they sez, ‘or, by the livin’ Jingo, off goes yer napper’.
1904		R.C. Lehmann Conversational Hints 241: Done again, by the living Jingo!
1906		New Boys’ World 22 Dec. 84: By Jingo, the old woman is an old man, or I’ll eat my hat!
1917		Union Jack 5 May 17: By jingo, we’ll make him hop for it yet!
1920		Sun & N.Y. Herald 6 June 66/2: I’ve got to have a raise! I’ll tackle the big chief right now b’jingoes!
1922		Joyce Ulysses 107: The gravediggers took up their spades and flung heavy clods of clay in on the coffin. Mr Bloom turned his face. And if he was alive all the time? Whew! By Jingo! That would be awful!
1922		S. Lewis Babbitt (1974) 16: He whistled the ballad ‘Oh, by gee, by gosh, by jingo’.
1932		Don Redmond ‘Nagasaki’ 🎵 They hug and kiss each night, / By jingo, boys, worth that price!
1947		Dly Capital Jrnl (Salem, OR) 24 July 12/3: [cartoon caption] I reckon thers some class to me, by Jickity!!!
1954		Oh Boy! No. 213: By Jingo! That’s the plane.
1962		H. Livings Nil Carborundum (1963) Act III: We don’t want to fight, but by jingo if we do / We’ll be known to all the nations as the mighty precious few.
1964		N.B. Harvey Any Old Dollars, Mister? 119: Jingos! I got one helluva beltin’ for heaving that rock on our roof.
1969		T. Murphy Crucial Week in the Life of a Grocer’s Assistant (1978) Scene iii: Oh bejingoes!
1976		H. Leonard Time Was (1981) Act II: But by jingo, it’s worth trying.
1985		T. Murphy Thief of a Christmas in Plays: 2 (1993) Act I: Jack Frost is comin’ with a vengeance for you tonight – Or the Bogey Man maybe bejingoes!
1988		Dandy Comic Library Special No. 11 66: By jingo!
1999		D. Healy Sudden Times 143: By Jingo, is that so?
2008		M. Hanif Case of Exploding Mangoes (2009) 278: By jingo, let’s suck the national security.
2024		J. Meades Empty Wigs (t/s) 216: The height of our imperium coincided with the height of our gluttonous appetite for opium [...] But by jingo there was no coincidence. It was the cause.