Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To mix in a confused way; throw together carelessly.
  • intransitive verb To muddle; confuse.
  • intransitive verb To be mixed in a confused way.
  • noun A confused or disordered mass.
  • noun A disordered state; a muddle.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A confused mixture, mass, or collection; a state of disorder or confusion.
  • noun A thin crisp cake, composed of flour, sugar, butter, and eggs, flavored with lemon-peel or sweet almonds.
  • To mix in a confused mass; put or throw together without order: often followed by together or up.
  • To stir up; arouse.
  • To meet or come together confusedly or promiscuously; be mixed up.
  • To act or work confusedly; stumble along; flounder.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To mix in a confused mass; to put or throw together without order; -- often followed by together or up.
  • noun A confused mixture; a mass or collection without order.
  • noun A small, thin, sugared cake, usually ring-shaped.
  • intransitive verb To meet or unite in a confused way; to mix confusedly.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To mix or confuse.
  • noun A mixture of unrelated things.
  • noun UK Items for a rummage sale.
  • noun archaic A small, thin, sugared cake, usually ring-shaped.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb assemble without order or sense
  • noun a confused multitude of things
  • noun a theory or argument made up of miscellaneous or incongruous ideas
  • verb be all mixed up or jumbled together
  • verb bring into random order
  • noun small flat ring-shaped cake or cookie

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Origin unknown.]

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word jumble.

Examples

  • I read things into the words, decoded them like a word jumble in the Sunday funnies.

    Vivian Rising Daniella Brodsky 2010

  • I climbed over them to sit and type on the bed, in jumble sale exile.

    It Gets Worse « Tales from the Reading Room 2009

  • On the surface it might appear to be any other word-jumble from the subset of Japanese gaming that only two small handfuls of obsessive sub-culture fans in the West can appreciate, but again, let me assure you this is different.

    Ten for 2010: the 10 most-anticipated games coming in the new year Boing Boing 2009

  • In the midst of this societal jumble is Albert Fish, serial killer and cannibal.

    GreenCine Daily: Interview. John Borowski. 2007

  • Miranda Goode have found that test subjects who are reminded of money prior to engaging in a word jumble descrambling exercise exhibit more self-sufficienct orientation compared to control subjects to whom neutral language is read prior to the exercise.

    The Brain, Money, and Law & Economics 2006

  • Miranda Goode have found that test subjects who are reminded of money prior to engaging in a word jumble descrambling exercise exhibit more self-sufficienct orientation compared to control subjects to whom neutral language is read prior to the exercise.

    Archive 2006-11-01 2006

  • They didn't know what to do with the word jumble and neither did 1.

    Cat & Mouse Patterson, James 1997

  • It's easy to foresee a scenario where paranoid Texas or USC supporters raise similar concerns if their team winds up in a late-season national title jumble that includes an SEC power.

    CNN.com 2009

  • The Perfect Place Contest requires players to earn the highest score on a skill-based, puzzle-based online game, similar to the word jumble games in the newspaper.

    Press Release 2008

  • Unlike other home-giveaways where contestants are required to write lengthy and subjective essays, The Perfect Place Contest requires players to earn the highest score on a skill-based, puzzle-based online game, similar to the word jumble games in the newspaper.

    Press Release 2008

  • Jumbies are not good. They're not good creatures, for the most part. Or at least this is how it was explained to me or told to me, the stories that were told to me. Jumbies are creatures who will eat you, given half the chance to eat you and so growing up, you had to know all the different ways that you could protect yourself from a jumbie so that you wouldn't get dragged off. Of course, we know what that's about – as adults, you tell these stories to children so that they stay where they're supposed to stay, you know, that's really the whole purpose behind them. But of course, as a little kid, you're thinking, your eyes are giant, you know, you're looking around, you're like, ready with all of your, you know, various accoutrements to make sure that, you know, no jumbie gets you tonight, you know? And I was fairly certain that there were people in my life who I really thought were jumbies. Ms. Evelyn, who lived next door to my grandmother. I was sure she was a soucouyant. I mean, and I still, you know, I'm fairly certain that she was, actually. So there's all of these different kinds of creatures, and so jumbies are sort of a catch-all name for a bunch of different creatures: there’s soucouyant, lagahoo, douen, La Diabless, there’s Papa Bois, there's Mama D’Leau, and those are just the ones that we talk about mostly in Trinidad and Tobago. Now throughout the Caribbean and South America, there are other types of jumbies, they may not be called jumbies, they might be called duppies. They might be called other things, but they're all part of the same type of story. And they are all fairly menacing, some to less degrees than others. Some are helpful. I actually recently found out that some of the ones that they talk about in Haiti are really quite benevolent. That's not my experience. As far as I know, they're just gonna eat you.

    What Is A Jumbie? 2022

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.