Other forms: jeered, jeers, jeering
To jeer is to shout mocking remarks at somebody. A crowd doing it together, and enjoying itself.
The word nearly always involves a group, which is what makes it worse than a single insult, and it suits crowds at matches, protests and public appearances. It takes at. As a noun, jeers is usually plural, so a chorus of jeers is standard. Boo is what a crowd does without words, and heckle is the version with wit in it, aimed at a speaker rather than shouted from a terrace.
Jeer may be shearing the fool. The word is probably from Dutch gieren, to roar with laughter, or else from gekscheren, literally to shear the fool, from gek, a fool.
Dutch
gieren — to roar with laughter, laugh loudly
English, today
jeer
Built from
From earlier gyr, probably from Dutch gieren (“to roar with laughter, laugh loudly”) (related to German gieren (“to gape, snap”)); or from Dutch gekscheren (“to jeer”) literally “to shear the fool”, from gek (“a fool”) (see geck) + scheren (“to shear”) (see shear). The OED states no verifiable connection to cheer.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, A Song of Ice and Fire
First appears in chapter 7 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word