jumble
Americanverb (used with object)
-
jumbles,
present (3rd person singular)
-
jumbled,
past participle, past
-
jumbling
present participle
-
to mix in a confused mass; put or throw together without order.
You've jumbled up all the cards.
- Antonyms:
- separate
-
to confuse mentally; muddle.
verb (used without object)
-
jumbles,
present (3rd person singular)
-
jumbled,
past participle, past
-
jumbling
present participle
-
to be mixed together in a disorderly heap or mass.
-
to meet or come together confusedly.
noun
-
jumbles
plural
-
a mixed or disordered heap or mass.
a jumble of paper clips, rubber bands, and string.
-
a confused mixture; medley.
-
a state of confusion or disorder.
- Synonyms:
- chaos, muddle, mess, gallimaufry, farrago, hodgepodge
- Antonyms:
- order
-
Also jumbal a small, round, flat cake or cookie with a hole in the middle.
verb
-
to mingle (objects, papers, etc) in a state of disorder
-
(tr; usually passive) to remember in a confused form; muddle
noun
-
a disordered mass, state, etc
-
articles donated for a jumble sale
-
Also called: jumbal. a small thin cake, usually ring-shaped
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
jumblesimple
-
jumblessimple
-
have jumbledperfect
-
has jumbledperfect
-
am jumblingprogressive
-
are jumblingprogressive
-
is jumblingprogressive
-
have been jumblingperfect progressive
-
has been jumblingperfect progressive
Past
-
jumbledsimple
-
had jumbledperfect
-
was jumblingprogressive
-
were jumblingprogressive
-
had been jumblingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of jumble
1520–30; perhaps blend of joll to bump (now dial.) and tumble
Explanation
When you jumble something, you throw a bunch of items haphazardly together. For example, many people jumble many random things in a kitchen junk drawer. Use the verb jumble to describe what happens when you scramble or mix things up. Some kids, for example, jumble their Lego toys together in a big bin, while others like to sort the pieces by color or size. You can call the mix of items itself a jumble too. In the early 1500s, jumble meant "to move confusedly," and it was probably modeled on stumble. Later that century, it came to mean "mix or confuse."
Vocabulary lists containing jumble
Workshop 4, Part 2
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"The Death of the Hired Man" by Robert Frost
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Locomotion
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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:
Another function is to translate a jumble of oral commands into a clear and concise text message.
From Barron's ● Aug. 12, 2026
“Our home was a crazy jumble of pieces from different places we’d lived in before, all commingling, but not very happily; I called it the Island of Misfit Furniture.”
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 23, 2026
"I just think fast fashion, we don't need it. We were all brought up in jumble sale clothes and it doesn't matter if they get dirty that way either."
From BBC ● Jun. 11, 2026
We store memories as a jumble of sensory fragments.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 15, 2026
If the pack disintegrated too soon, they would be unable to launch the boats and maneuver in the jumble of broken and grinding ice, and unable to find a floe large enough to camp on.
From "Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World" by Jennifer Armstrong
So by the time a public space opened up in 1977, the staff had a surfeit of wooden soapboxes containing jumbles of animal bones but little else.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 22, 2026
The heist piece is straightforward, but at times the fallout distractingly jumbles the puzzle.
From Salon ● Sep. 7, 2025
Saving and paying for college is an endurance test, a forced march on an often 50-year parade, where strange numerical codes and senseless jumbles of letters mark a route that Waze can’t map.
From New York Times ● Jan. 18, 2024
Elsewhere, household detritus was littered among ruined deck chairs and jumbles of mangled trees outside wrecked homes.
From Reuters ● Oct. 28, 2023
Tied up along its shores was every conceivable kind of watercraft— Chinese junks, tugboats, rickety houseboats, old schooners, and barges heaped with jumbles of industrial cargo.
From "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" by Daniel James Brown
It’s as if the entire information ecosystem has been jumbled by an overactive imagination.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026
Initially intriguing, the jumbled chronology eventually proves to be largely decorative until a disappointing late-reel twist explains why the labored device was deployed in the first place.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 26, 2026
If you happened to miss Sunday’s jumbled mess of a Golden Globes ceremony, the telecast can be best summed up by a scene from one of the night’s most nominated films.
From Salon ● Jan. 13, 2026
The last few weeks of celebrity gossiping, scheming and the occasional fart may feel like one big crazy jumbled dream.
From BBC ● Nov. 6, 2025
The wind gusted in a new direction, blowing from the jumbled saplings on the far side of the island.
From "A Girl Named Disaster" by Nancy Farmer
The move would be part of a larger shake-up jumbling several veteran anchors' time slots.
From Salon ● Jan. 17, 2025
Fifty years ago, famed physicist Stephen Hawking wrote down an equation that predicts that a black hole has entropy, an attribute typically associated with the disordered jumbling of atoms and molecules in material.
From Science Magazine ● Mar. 28, 2024
The jumbling together of genetic material from the virus and the animal does not prove that a raccoon dog itself was infected.
From New York Times ● Mar. 16, 2023
And for the coach tasked with jumbling his lineups to accommodate Leonard the reserve – while also juggling a minutes restriction for backup guard Wall, as well -- it presented more headaches than benefits.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 18, 2022
Images from the day animate themselves, jumbling in my vision.
From "Love, Hate & Other Filters" by Samira Ahmed
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.
