jump
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "jump", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "jump" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "jump" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
jump is aEnglishverb. It means: To propel oneself rapidly upward, downward and/or in any horizontal direction such that momentum causes the body to become airborne. Pronounced /d͡ʒʌmp/. It ranks #2,078 in English word frequency. Often confused with jun and jus.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | jump |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /d͡ʒʌmp/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #2,078 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for jump is 4 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /d͡ʒʌmp/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,078 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 26 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for jump, with forms such as "jjump", "jmup", and "jummp". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "jun", "jus", "just", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English jumpen (“to walk quickly, run, jump”), probably of Middle Low German or North Germanic origin, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *gumpōną ~ *gumbōną (“to hop, skip, bounce”), an iterative verb. The OED suggests an imitative origin. Related … Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is jump, spelled J-U-M-P, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To propel oneself rapidly upward, downward and/or in any horizontal direction such that momentum causes the body to become airborne.
- 2To cause oneself to leave an elevated location and fall downward.
- 3To pass by means of a spring or leap; to overleap.
- 4To employ a parachute to leave an aircraft or elevated location.
- 5To react to a sudden, often unexpected, stimulus (such as a sharp prick or a loud sound) by jerking the body violently.
- 6To increase sharply, to rise, to shoot up.
- 7To employ a move in certain board games where one game piece is moved from one legal position to another passing over the position of another piece.
- 8To move to a position (in a queue/line) that is further forward.
- 9To pass (a traffic light) when it is indicating that one should stop.
- 10To attack suddenly and violently.
- 11To engage in sexual intercourse with (a person).
- 12To cause to jump.
- 13To move the distance between two opposing subjects.
- 14To increase the height of a tower crane by inserting a section at the base of the tower and jacking up everything above it.
- 15To increase speed aggressively and without warning.
- 16To expose to danger; to risk; to hazard.
- 17To join by a buttweld.
- 18To thicken or enlarge by endwise blows; to upset.
- 19To bore with a jumper.
- 20To jump-start a car or other vehicle with a dead battery, as with jumper cables.
- 21To coincide; to agree; to accord; to tally; followed by with.
- 22To start executing code from a different location, rather than following the program counter.
- 23To flee; to make one's escape.
- 24To shift one's position or attitude, especially suddenly and significantly.
- 25To switch locations on chromosomes.
- 26To commit suicide.
Etymology
From Middle English jumpen (“to walk quickly, run, jump”), probably of Middle Low German or North Germanic origin, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *gumpōną ~ *gumbōną (“to hop, skip, bounce”), an iterative verb. The OED suggests an imitative origin. Related to jumble. In the sense “to propel oneself” it displaced leap partially and spring largely. Cognates Cognate with German Low German jumpen (“to jump”), archaic German gumpen (“to jump, hop, bounce”), dialectal German gampen (“to hop”), Alemannic German gumpe (“to leap, jump”), Walser dialect kumpu, Old Norse gopta (“to jump; make jump”) Danish gumpe (“to jolt”), Swedish gumpa (“to jump”), Danish gimpe (“to move up and down”), Middle English jumpren, jumbren (“to mix, jumble”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: jjump,jmup,jummp,jumpp,jupm,ujmp
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for jump
Misspelling Variants of "jump"
Frequency rank: #2,078 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter J in our English index: