Jumping

How to spell jumping

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce jumping

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does jumping mean?

1. verbPushing oneself off the ground or a surface into the air, or moving suddenly and sharply.
2. nounThe act or sport of leaping into the air, often as part of an athletic or equestrian event.

Jumping in a sentence

• verb

  The children were jumping on the trampoline all afternoon.

• noun

  Show jumping is the highlight of the county fair each summer.

• verb

  The dog kept jumping at the gate whenever the postman arrived.

• noun

  Her coach praised her jumping technique during the long-jump practice.

Where does jumping come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word 'jump' first surfaces in English in the early 1500s, and its precise origin is genuinely murky. It is widely thought to be imitative, that is, a word coined to echo the sound of feet thudding back to the ground after a leap, much as 'bump' and 'thump' suggest their own noises. Some scholars have linked it to the dialectal Low German 'gumpen', meaning 'to hop or spring', though the connection is not certain. The present participle and gerund form 'jumping' is built simply by adding the suffix '-ing' to the verb, and because the verb ends in a single consonant after a short vowel that consonant is not doubled, so it stays 'jumping' rather than 'jumpping'. The word has carried its lively, energetic sense almost unchanged for five centuries, which is part of why it feels so plainly Anglo-Saxon even though its true parentage is unconfirmed.

How the word is built

• jump (root, to leap)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)