Jessica
name ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A female given name from Hebrew.
"Lorenzo: In such a night / Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew, / And with an unthrift love did run from Venice, / As far as Belmont."
Example
More examples"Jessica took all the blame on herself."
Etymology
First used by William Shakespeare in Merchant of Venice in the early 17th century, probably from Hebrew יִסְכָּה (yiská, “Iscah in Genesis 11:29, Jescha in the Wycliffe version”), a proper name meaning "he will see/behold/look for", the 3ms imperfect form of a verb ultimately from the root ס־כ־ה (s-k-h), itself an alternative form of the root שׂ־כ־ה (ś-k-h), both of which mean "to see, behold, look for". * By folk etymology seen as an elaborate form of Jessie, from Jane.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.