Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US, also jakey) Jamaica ginger, a drink with intoxicating properties [esp. popular during Prohibition (1920–33)].

1919		Dly Ardmoreite (OK) 26 Dec. 8/2: Most of the parties frisked at police headquarters are found in possession of a little bottle of ‘Jake’.
1926		Flynn’s 16 Jan. 640: I sashayed for a legger an’ run into a rube hip agent with a bottle and some jake which helped some [DARE].
1930		Nottingham Eve. Post 25 July 10/2: The liquid ginger is bought from a chemist [...] The victims [...] are locally nicknamed ‘jake paralytics’.
1937		E. Anderson Thieves Like Us (1999) 21: The druggists were fixing up the cheap trade with jake and orange peel and hair tonics.
1943		W. Guthrie Bound for Glory (1969) 223: It’s called Jamaica Ginger, or plain Jake – a mixture of ginger and alcohol.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn) 131: jakey Jamaica ginger.
1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 109/2: Jake, n. Jamaica ginger. ‘Some big jig (Negro) just got tossed in the can (jail) for getting full of jake and throwing slugs (firing pistol shots) on the main stem (main street).’ [...] Jakey. See Jake.
1967		(con. 1920s) J. Thompson South of Heaven (1994) 45: Jake is almost pure alcohol.
1980		J.L. Gwaltney Drylongso xvi: jackie – a strong alcoholic drink consumed especially at New Year’s. [Ibid.] 103: They really liked my jackie and wanted to know how to make it.
1995		R. Polito Savage Art 120: The [...] lethal and addictive jake, a peppery Jamaica ginger concoction sold as medicine in drugstores, ravaged the nervous system.
2000		B. Bilger Noodling for Flatheads (2001) 100: In 1930 authorities estimated that fifteen thousand people had been partially paralyzed by ‘Jake,’ a type of moonshine made with Jamaica ginger.

2. (US) methylated spirits, or surgical spirits, used as an alcoholic drink; also attrib.; thus jake-drinker, a meths drinker; thus jakeleg n.

1929		Tommy Johnson ‘Canned Heat Blues’ 🎵 Jake alcohol’s [ruined me, churning] ’bout my soul / Because brownskin women don’t do the easy roll.
1932		T.B.G. Mackenzie ‘The British Prison’ in Fortnightly Rev. Mar. n.p.: This class represents the real human wreckage [...] Over twenty-five per cent. are ‘jake’ or ‘feke’ drinkers. They drink methylated spirits either in water or beer [...] The jake drinker’s life is a short one and most of it he passes in prison suffering the agonies of a terrible reaction.
1936		W.A. Gape Half a Million Tramps 196: Most of them I knew as ‘Jake Wallers’: tramps who had given way to the ‘Meth’ craze and were in a perpetual state of stupefaction.
1966		G. Fletcher Down Among the Meths Men 51: Stage three is the drinking of neat blue or ‘Jake’.
1966		G. Fletcher Down Among the Meths Men 46: They were all dying for a drink [...] blues for the jake-drinkers, blues and lemonade or gas and muilk for the rest.
1988		J. Healy Grass Arena (1990) 68: Mad Gerry’s drinking the jake and frothing at the mouth.
2000		(con. 1940s–60s) Décharné Straight from the Fridge Dad.

3. a drinker of methylated spirits; thus any alcoholic vagrant.

1966		G. Fletcher Down Among the Meths Men 42: A jake would see a pal crouching in an alley or shivering in a door [...] and go up to him.
2009		T. Black Gutted 139: We were just another pair of jakes making the most of giro day.

4. (US prison) a drunkard.

1939		‘Hotel Sl.’ in AS XIV:3 Oct. 240/1: jake Drunken person.
1941		M. Prenner ‘Drunk in Sl.’ in AS XVI:1 Jan. 70/2: drunken person [...] jake.
1971–2		C. Shafer ‘Catheads [...] and Cho-Cho Sticks’ in Abernethy Bounty of Texas (1990) 208: Jake or Jack, n. – a drunk or alcoholic (1950s).