Synonyms

jam-packed

British

adjective

crowded, packed, or filled to capacity

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Explanation

Anything that's jam-packed is as crowded or full as it can be. If you hate crowds, you'll want to avoid the jam-packed shopping malls around Christmas time. A subway car in Tokyo at rush hour is jam-packed, while a bus in a small village in Germany may have only a few passengers. And a dull day in traffic court will be sparsely attended, but during a dramatic celebrity trial the courthouse is bound to be jam-packed. This adjective is informal, dating from about the turn of the twentieth century. Earlier it was jam-full — both come from the "squeeze into a space" sense of jam.

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Example Sentences

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Jam packed court, necessitating postponement of hearing twice after long wait.

From New York Times • Mar. 16, 2018

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023