Word.ws English Dictionary

Jeames

Jeames noun: a footman; a flunky.

Noun

Jeames (plural Jeameses)

  1. (dated, slang) A footman; a flunky.

Proper noun

Jeames

  1. A male given name, variant of James.

Forms of Jeames

pluralJeameses

Origin of Jeames

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), English novelist, used this name for The Yellowplush Papers (1837-8), a series of sketches in Fraser's Magazine purportedly written by a London West End footman named Charles James Yellowplush. The name itself was suggested by a domestic servant in the Thackeray household, "a bona fide manservant, an old gentleman named John Goldsworthy, formerly the Larkbeare footman, who wore faded knee-breeches in the family livery" [D.J. Taylor, Thackeray, 1999]. Plush was a fabric traditionally used for footmen's wear, and especially for their brightly-colored breeches. The same character appeared with a "gentrified" form of his name in The Diary of C. Jeames de la Pluche (1846), and his popularity caused "Jeames" (an affected form of "James") to be used for a time as a generic name for a footman.

Questions about Jeames

What does Jeames mean?
Jeames means a footman; a flunky.
What part of speech is Jeames?
Jeames can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of Jeames?
The plural of Jeames is Jeameses.

Words near Jeames in the dictionary

  1. jealousing
  2. jealously
  3. jealousness
  4. jealousy
  5. jealusty
  6. Jeames
  7. Jeameses
  8. jean
  9. jean jacket
  10. jean jackets
  11. Jean Lafitte

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Jeames (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “Jeames.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/jeames. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.