jitney
Americannoun
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jitneys
plural
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a small bus or car following a regular route along which it picks up and discharges passengers, originally charging each passenger five cents.
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Older Slang. a nickel; five-cent piece.
verb (used with or without object)
noun
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a small bus that carries passengers for a low price, originally five cents
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slang a nickel; five cents
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of jitney
1900–05, of obscure origin; French jeton jetton is a phonetically implausible source
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:
Wave, a public jitney, runs routes all over the island and is free through the end of 2026.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 20, 2026
But the second the jitney turns into the South Fork, and I start to see trees, my shoulders drop.”
From New York Times ● Aug. 1, 2023
He had just come from helping at his church’s soup kitchen and now was at Tops, volunteering in the community jitney service that shuttles people without a ride to and from the store.
From Seattle Times ● May 16, 2022
This is the dramatic context for this jitney station, which is about to be boarded up by the city so that it can eventually be torn down.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 25, 2019
The jitney takes about twenty minutes to drop me off at Mr. Reilly’s work.
From "Landscape with Invisible Hand" by M.T. Anderson
A few of the more pretentious ones pass in their own cars, or in jitneys, or upon busses.
From Slate ● Oct. 23, 2019
Those agents, who drive pickup trucks, are different than the parking enforcement agents that ticket vehicles for meter violations and other offenses, who drive small vehicles sometimes called jitneys.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 19, 2018
In other countries, mini-buses that occupy a gray world between public and private transportation go by many names: jitneys, matatus, "informal" transit.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 25, 2015
Similar services, sometimes called jitneys, have operated in San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Houston.
From Washington Post
Then another terrific blast sounded from the Big Bridge, and the girls saw three large jitneys turn in from the main road and pull up before Bill’s cottage.
From The Woodcraft Girls in the City by Lillian Elizabeth Roy
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.
