Card games became very widespread in Europe in the Middle Ages, and a little later penetrated into Russia. There are jacks in the deck of cards, one in each of the suits. But it turns out that the jack is not only a picture with a double mirror image of a young man or a knight in armor.
Junior figure
Explanatory dictionaries give such a definition to the word "jack" - "the youngest of the figures in playing cards." Its card designation differs in different countries: if in Russia it is B, and for example in England it is Kn (from knave it is a knight). Interestingly, several centuries ago, in France, the jack of each of the four suits had its own heroic prototype: the peak was Roland, the club one was Lancelot, the tambourine one was Hector, the heart one was named after the now little-known French commander of the Hundred Years War La Gira. Its value in different games ranged from 2 to 11 points.
Origin of the word
The most common variant of origin is from the French word valet. Translated, it means "servant, footman", and goes back, in turn, to the old French vaslet - vassal. In other words, in the Middle Ages a jack is a vassal of a certain powerful feudal lord.
Not just a map
But there are other meanings of the word jack. In Russia, and Dahl points to this in his "Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language", it was a synonym for the lackey, lackey. In Europe, the so-called male servant, who was obliged to provide his master with services of an intimate nature: to cut his hair, beard and mustache, shave, cut his nails, bring him home if he “slightly went over”, and even opened the blood if necessary. In England, foreigners were most often hired for this position. One of them even left notes on his service under the title "Jack's Adventures, written by himself."
Some literary characters, consisting of jacks, lackeys with their masters, are well known to us all. Suffice it to call Passepartout from "Around the World in 80 Days" by Jules Verne, or Figaro from "Marriage of Figaro" Beaumarchais. And certainly most of us in childhood were read by the Three Musketeers by Dumas and probably remember the faithful servants of the main characters - Grimaud, Musketon, Bazin and Planchet.
Many people know the expression “lie down to sleep with a jack”, which means the arrangement of two on the same bed, but with their heads in each other's legs. And on the thieves' slang, the jack is a fool. There is one more meaning - “a person serving the authorities of the criminal environment”.
In 1910, a group of Moscow artists, including Konchalovsky, Lentulov, Burliuk and Malevich, founded an association called Jack of Diamonds, which became one of the trendsetters in Russian painting of the pre-revolutionary period. Their bright, colorful works of that time, close to popular ones, probably corresponded to the catchy figure of the red-horned jack.