Jumpy means nervous and easily startled. Feeling jumpy, a jumpy horse, jumpy about the results.
It describes the physical symptom rather than the thought: a jumpy person startles at a door closing. It takes about when the cause is named. Of a film or a recording, jumpy means unsteady, which is a different and mechanical sense.
1adjectivejumpyNervous and easily startled.
“I've been jumpy all evening since I watched that horror film.”
jumpy is a state.
Proto-Germanic
*gumbōną — to hop, skip, bounce
Middle English
jumpen — to walk quickly, run, jump
English
jump
English, today
jumpy
From jump + -y. jump comes 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