Balling the jack

This is an American slang expression dating from the 1920s meaning to go fast or take off at top speed. It became the particular jargon of US railroad workers and drivers whose trains would typically ‘ball the jack’ and these workers are sometimes mistakenly credited with the origin. In fact, the origin derives from a very fast, lively ragtime tune called Ballin’ the Jack written by Jim Burris and Chris Smith in 1913. The tune became so popular that US railroad men adopted the expression for anything that moved quickly. Jack Kerouac uses the expression in On the Road (1957). “No sooner were we out of town than Eddie started to ball that jack ninety miles an hour out of sheer exuberance.”