Etymology

Proper noun

1. The father of king David.
2. of biblical origin.
3. A female given name, a variant of Jessie.

Quotations

• Now David was the son of that Ephrathite of Bethlehemjudah, whose name was Jesse; and he had eight sons; and the man went among men for an old man in the days of Saul.

• 1882 ?Billy Gashade: Jesse James (folk song):

  Jesse James was a lad that killed many a man, / He robbed the Glendale train. / He stole from the rich and he gave to the poor, / He'd a hand and a heart and a brain.

• 1985 Alice Munro, The Progress of Love, Chatto&Windus 1987, ISBN 0701131616, page 166-167:

  We had decided to change the spelling of our names. Mine was to become Jesse instead of Jessie, and hers was to be Meribeth, not MaryBeth. We signed these names to the test papers we turned in at school.

  The teacher waved my paper in the air. "I can't give a mark to this person, because I don't know who this person is," she said. "Who is this Jesse?" She spelled the name out loud. "That is a boy's name. Does anybody here know a boy named Jesse?"

Related terms

• Jess, Jessie
• give X Jesse "scold X, beat X"
• give X particular Jesse "give X a severe beating"