Jumbo

How to spell jumbo

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce jumbo

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does jumbo mean?

1. adjectiveUnusually or exceptionally large.

Jumbo in a sentence

• The airline retired its last jumbo jet after thirty years of service.

• She ordered the jumbo box of detergent to save money on the weekly shop.

Where does jumbo come from?

Language of origin: Other

This word began life as a name rather than a description. Jumbo was an enormous African elephant kept at London Zoo and then sold to the American showman P. T. Barnum in 1882, where he was billed as the largest elephant on earth. The keepers' choice of name is debated: it may echo a West African word for elephant such as the Kongo 'nzamba', or it may come from 'mumbo jumbo', a term Europeans had used for a supposed African idol or for confusing speech. Whatever its exact root, the elephant became so famous that his name passed almost immediately into ordinary English as an adjective meaning 'enormous'. Because the modern word is essentially one celebrity animal's name, its origin is genuinely uncertain, and the simple spelling preserves the way the name was written on Victorian circus posters.

How the word is built

• jumbo (a single unanalysable root, originally a proper name; no prefix or suffix)