black jacket n Cf blue jacket n 2, yellow jacket n 1
A black or mostly black wasp, usu one of two wasps otherwise very similar to the yellow jacket n 1: Vespula consobrina or the bald-faced hornet n.
1903 MO State Horticult. Soc. Annual Rept. for 1902 106, All stinging insects go to buckwheat bloom, not only honey bees but hornets, wasps, yellow jackets, black jackets, sweat bees, bumble bees and the others seek the bloom, if there is a good bloom. 1930 Hunter-Trader-Trapper June 16 LA, Black jackets, a species of vicious wasps which nest in the jungle-like brush of the swamps. 1966–68 DARE (Qu. R21) Infs MS47, NC35, Black jacket; OK31, Black jacket—similar to a wasp, but more slender and wings are black; VA15, Black jacket—jet black, very shiny. 1973 Allen LAUM 1.330 (as of c1950) 1 inf, nwMN, Black jacket: Black, yellow stripes, small nest. 1977 GA Univ. Ag. Exper. Stations Research Bulletin 207.15, In the Blue Ridge Mountains it [=Vespula consobrina] is sufficiently well known to have acquired a local name, the “blackjacket.” 1982 Jrl. KS Entomol. Soc. 55.373, Vespula consobrina (Saussure) is a black and white yellowjacket, often called the blackjacket, found throughout the Canadian and Transition zones of the Boreal Region of North America. 2006 in 2016 DARE File—Internet MT, [Resp to photo of bald-faced hornet:] I’m from Montana, and I would call it a hornet or more likely a blackjacket, depending on whether I got close enough to it to see the white markings. 2014 Ibid MN, Bald-faced Hornets, sometimes called Blackjackets (probably because they are closely related to Yellow Jackets) or White-faced Wasp, or Black and White Wasp, are large-bodied for wasps and notable for their huge “paper-mache” nest constructions.