JOB'S TEARS, in botany, the popular name for _Coix Lachryma-Jobi_, a species of grass, of the tribe _maydeae_, which also includes the maize (see GRASSES). The seeds, or properly fruits, are contained singly in a stony involucre or bract, which does not open until the enclosed seed germinates. The young involucre surrounds the female flower and the stalk supporting the spike of male flowers, and when ripe has the appearance of bluish-white porcelain. Being shaped somewhat like a large drop of fluid, the form has suggested the name. The fruits are esculent, but the involucres are the part chiefly used, for making necklaces and other ornaments. The plant is a native of India, but is now widely spread throughout the tropical zone. It grows in marshy places; and is cultivated in China, the fruit having a supposed value as a diuretic and anti-phthisic. It was cultivated by John Gerard, author of the famous _Herball_, at the end of the 16th century as a tender annual. JOCASTA, or IOCASTA ([Greek: Iokastê]; in Homer, [Greek: Epikastê]), in Greek legend, wife of Laïus, mother (afterwards wife) of Oedipus (q.v.), daughter of Menoeceus, sister (or daughter) of Creon. According to Homer (_Od._ xi. 271) and Sophocles (_Oed. Tyr._ 1241), on learning that Oedipus was her son she immediately hanged herself; but in Euripides (_Phoenissae_, 1455) she stabs herself over the bodies of her sons Eteocles and Polynices, who had slain each other in single combat before the walls of Thebes. JOCKEY, a professional rider of race-horses, now the current usage (see HORSE-RACING). The word is by origin a diminutive of "Jock," the Northern or Scots colloquial equivalent of the name "John" (cf. JACK). A familiar instance of the use of the word as a name is in "Jockey of Norfolk" in Shakespeare's _Richard III._ v. 3, 304. In the 16th and 17th centuries the word was applied to horse-dealers, postilions, itinerant minstrels and vagabonds, and thus frequently bore the meaning of a cunning trickster, a "sharp," whence "to jockey," to outwit, or "do" a person out of something. The current usage is found in John Evelyn's _Diary_, 1670, when it was clearly well known. George Borrow's attempt to derive the word from the gipsy _chukni_, a heavy whip used by horse-dealing gipsies, has no foundation.