Jungle

How to spell jungle

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce jungle

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does jungle mean?

1. nounAn area of dense tropical forest with tangled vegetation.
2. nounA confusing, competitive, or lawless environment.

Jungle in a sentence

• The documentary followed a team trekking deep into the jungle.

• Navigating the tax rules felt like hacking through a jungle of paperwork.

• Heavy rain and thick jungle slowed the explorers to a crawl.

• The trading floor was a jungle of shouting and frantic deals.

Where does jungle come from?

Language of origin: Sanskrit

This word travelled into English from India during the days of the East India Company. It comes from the Hindi and Urdu word jangal, meaning an uncultivated tract of land, a forest, or a wilderness. That word in turn goes back to the Sanskrit jangala, which, surprisingly, originally meant something close to the opposite of the modern sense: it described land that was dry, arid, or sparsely covered scrub rather than dense tropical growth. As English speakers used the term across the lush forests of South Asia in the late 1700s, its meaning shifted toward the tangled, overgrown vegetation we picture today. The spelling settled with that quiet 'g' before 'le', and the figurative sense of a chaotic, lawless place (as in 'the corporate jungle') grew up in the twentieth century.

How the word is built

• jungle (single root from Hindi jangal: forest, wasteland)