jazzy
Americanadjective
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pertaining to or suggestive of jazz music.
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Informal. active or lively.
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Informal. fancy or flashy.
a jazzy sweater.
adjective
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of, characteristic of, or resembling jazz music
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gaudy or flashy
a jazzy car
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of jazzy
Explanation
Anything that sounds like jazz music, or in other ways reminds you of jazz, is jazzy. The spirited, toe-tapping version of "Happy Birthday" you sing to your grandpa might be described as jazzy. There are jazzy covers of staid songs, or jazzy ensembles that bring some elements of jazz to whatever they're playing. You can also use this adjective to describe something that's fancy in a flashy or ostentatious way: "She wore a long, jazzy gown that was covered in glittering sequins." Jazzy, coined around 1919, comes from jazz, which probably stems from the Creole slang jass, "strenuous activity."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
It’s simultaneously jazzy and vulgar, wry and prophetic.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 21, 2026
“First Star of the Night” is one of several tracks with meter shifts and guitar tracery that give it a slightly jazzy edge.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 3, 2026
With a jazzy score fixed atop its ’60s-era mod-cartoon opening sequence, “Propeller One-Way Night Coach” makes no effort to disguise its pastiche.
From Salon ● Jun. 2, 2026
His favorite is 1984’s jazzy “2:00 AM Paradise Cafe,” on which he collaborated with Mulligan, Sarah Vaughan and Mel Tormé.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 27, 2026
In fact, the thing Lorraine and I liked best about the Pigman was that he didn’t go around saying we were cards or jazzy or cool or hip.
From "The Pigman" by Paul Zindel
She delivers on the daring promise of her prizewinning debut, “The Old Drift,” while teasing out a jazzier, more intimate register, casting a spell that probes the fluid, disorienting flow of grief.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 3, 2022
Even in jazzier moments, he retains his purity, his ravishing classicism.
From New York Times ● May 6, 2021
By contrast, Davis conjures a prickly dynamic with Boseman as Levee, whose youthful arrogance and newer, jazzier style represent a looming threat to Ma’s authority.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 19, 2020
Nic is the jazzier part, the one full of vertiginous highs and gutter-licking lows, though anyone who has read Tweak may wonder where the grittier specifics have gone.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 13, 2018
Why not select a more cheerful subject and adopt a jazzier style—we of today would reject Milton’s Paradise Lost.
From Voices; Birth-Marks; The Man and the Elephant by Holt, Mathew Joseph
The jazziest of his three entries consists of regular arrays of horizontal segments, but he varies the width of the lines and the spaces between them to create a sense of pulsating motion.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 20, 2021
If Louis Armstrong established and defined jazz as a soloist’s art, then even at the start, at their jazziest, the Necks weren’t playing jazz.
From New York Times ● Oct. 4, 2017
The long finale, Sailing Westwards, has the jazziest passages, but also hints at an exultant, rhumba-like party mood.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 14, 2012
One of the jazziest is called "Trafalgar Square" and it makes abstract music out of urban commotion.
From Slate ● Dec. 18, 2010
Bergstrom's two-piece orchestra was in the throes of its jazziest fox-trot number.
From Half Portions by Ferber, Edna
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
