jounce

American  

[jouns] / dʒaʊns /

verb (used with or without object)

jounced, jouncing

1. to move joltingly or roughly up and down; bounce.

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noun

1. a jouncing movement.

jounce British  

/ dʒaʊns /

verb

1. to shake or jolt or cause to shake or jolt; bounce

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noun

1. a jolting movement; shake; bump

Etymology

Origin of jounce

1400–50; late Middle English; apparently blend of joll to bump (now obsolete) and bounce

Explanation

To jounce is to move up and down suddenly, the way you jounce around in the back seat of your brother's old car as he drives along a rutted dirt road. When you jounce, you bounce abruptly. You may love to jounce down a frozen hill on an old plastic sled, while your best friend prefers the relative comfort of a huge, inflatable tube. Jounce is also a noun: "That last jounce knocked my teeth together." This word is probably a combination of bounce and jump or jolt, and we've been using it since the mid-15th century.

Example Sentences

Joe DeAngelo was thick-muscled and dough-faced, with an odd jounce to his gait.

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 11, 2019

The up-tempo jounce of “Monk’s Dream” and “Criss Cross” has been turned into surface-skimming, 12-tone dashes, with debts to Cage and Stockhausen.

From New York Times • Sep. 11, 2018

If you’re going to run Graham & Co. one day, Graham tells Pierrepont, “you’ve got to add dynamite and ginger and jounce to your equipment.”

From Slate • Sep. 29, 2014

Every jounce caused pain to shoot through his body.

From New York Times • Aug. 14, 2013

‘He does like her better—she don’t jounce his fat so. He always rides her ’round Boston.

From "Johnny Tremain" by Esther Hoskins Forbes