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

See Examples For:

jounce jounced jouncing

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

A chunk of flaming timber jounced down a sharply angled slope, smacked onto a two-lane road and hurtled into a thicket below, igniting brush along the way.

From Seattle Times ● Oct. 28, 2021

That rickety bus bounced and jounced along dirt roads and pulled into an Arizona elementary school.

From New York Times ● Jan. 1, 2017

The bed jounced when Mannie sat down on it where the medic had been sitting.

From Slate ● Apr. 15, 2014

Lovers were courting on the white wooden benches, waiters jounced past us carrying trays holding glasses of orange juice and apple tea.

From The Guardian ● Feb. 27, 2011

Heat shimmers rose off the street as the hathay rattled and jounced along on its iron-rimmed wheels, giving a dreamlike quality to their surroundings.

From "A Dance with Dragons" by George R. R. Martin

We have a few seconds of excruciating video from the jouncing camera strapped to a police officer’s uniform.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 23, 2021

“Cut Bank” has the bumpy momentum of a vehicle jouncing along on a rutted country road.

From New York Times ● Apr. 2, 2015

At the beginning of the novel, he is in a bus jouncing through Costa Rica, the rickety vehicle full of vacationers who are pallid and fanny-packed and “pre-dead”—that is, retired.

From Newsweek ● Mar. 21, 2015

And no one buys cheap dumbwatches merely for their functionality anymore, either—aside from a few specific cases, like a runner who buys a Timex digital because he doesn’t want a phone jouncing in his pocket.

From Slate ● Mar. 11, 2015

He hears jouncing axles, grumbling tailpipes, rain on the roof of the radio truck.

From "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr