jaywalking

Etymology

Back-formation from jaywalker. Analyzable as jaywalk + -ing, or jay (“a stupid person”) + walking.

noun

  1. An act of behaving as a jaywalker.“[…] when he had felt unhappy over a movie theater large enough to contain ten times the population of Schoenstrom, and been cursed by a policeman for jaywalking, and had passed a hotel entirely full of diplomats and marble and caviare[…”