Random musings of an unoccupied mind led me to enquire the following: why is stealing a car after evicting it’s present occupants known as carjacking? After all, you don’t “planejack” an aircraft, you hijack it.

The sequitur concerned the derivation of the word hijack. Thanks to the newly revamped (but still pop-up infested) dictionary.com, I learn that the word hijack is a verb derived from hijacker or, rather, highjacker, a term coined in America during the 1920’s and is a corruption of highwayman and jacker, a jacker being someone who hunts at night with the aid of a jacklight (which, in turn, is a type of oil lantern).

So there we have it.

(Addendum: I’ve subsequently learnt that during the 1960’s, the term skyjack was used to describe the hijacking of aircraft.)