Other forms: jumping, jumped, jumps
To jump is to push off the ground so that both feet leave it. Jump over a puddle, jump up and down, the horse jumped the fence.
From that come several everyday extensions. To jump is also to move suddenly in surprise: the noise made me jump. Prices jump when they rise sharply. And to jump to a conclusion is to reach it without the evidence. Note the difference from leap, which is longer and more literary, and hop, which is on one foot. Jump the queue is British for pushing in; jump-start is what you do to a car with a flat battery.
1verbjumpTo push off the ground into the air.
“She jumped over the wall without breaking stride.”
2verbmoveTo move suddenly because something startled you.
“The door slammed and everybody jumped.”
3verbriseTo rise suddenly in amount.
“Prices jumped by a fifth in a month.”
4nounactAn act of jumping, or a thing jumped over.
“She cleared the last jump and won.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
jump is a way of moving off the ground.
Jump appears in Middle English with no clear ancestor and is probably imitative — a word made from the sound of landing. That is unusual for a verb this basic, and it means jump has no cousins in the other Germanic languages the way run and walk do.
Proto-Germanic
*gumbōną — to hop, skip, bounce
Middle English
jumpen — to walk quickly, run, jump
English, today
jump
From Middle English jumpen (“to walk quickly, run, jump”), probably of Middle Low German - or gmq - origin, ultimately from Proto-Germanic gumbōną (“to hop, skip, bounce”), an iterative verb. The OED suggests an imitative of the sound origin. Related to jumble. In the sense “to propel oneself” it displaced leap partially and spring largely. 2 Cognate with German Low German jumpen (“to jump”), archaic German gumpen (“to jump, hop, bounce”), dialectal German gampen (“to hop”), gsw 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”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA