jumping-off place
Americannoun
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a place for use as a starting point.
Paris was the jumping-off place for our tour of Europe.
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an out-of-the-way place; the farthest limit of anything settled or civilized.
noun
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a starting point, as in an enterprise
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a final or extreme condition
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a place where one leaves civilization to go into the wilderness
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a very remote spot
Etymology
Origin of jumping-off place
An Americanism dating back to 1820–30
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.
Lots of visitors come through here in the summer because it is a jumping off place for trips into the Brooks Range.
From Scientific American • Apr. 10, 2012
It gives Japan a better jumping off place toward the oil-rich Netherlands Indies than it has ever had before.
From Time Magazine Archive
Wheeling, in the days of the great hegira to the West, was considered to be the end of Eastern civilization and the jumping off place into the great Indian country.
From Time Magazine Archive
Now the end of the world seemed far away, and the jumping off place was a rickety wall of white and black, leaning against a cold, drear sky.
From The Prince of Graustark by McCutcheon, George Barr
Nome was an important stop, because the Lindberghs planned to use this as their jumping off place for the hop across the Pacific Ocean to Karagin Island, off the Kamchatkan Peninsula.
From Famous Flyers And Their Famous Flights by Grayson, J. J.
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.
