adjective
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nervous or apprehensive
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moving jerkily or fitfully
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of jumpy
Explanation
Someone who's jumpy is anxious and jittery. If you've ever been so nervous that you couldn't sit still, you know how it feels to be jumpy. This informal adjective is perfect for describing the sort of anxiety you can't hide. If you're shifting in your seat, crossing and uncrossing your legs, and nervously tapping your fingers on your knees as you wait to give a speech, you're jumpy. Jumpy also means "bumpy," as when you take a jumpy bike ride along a rocky, unpaved road.
Vocabulary lists containing jumpy
Long Way Down
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Elijah of Buxton
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The Night Diary
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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:
“The market is very, very jumpy when it comes to the risks to foreign demand” for Treasurys, said Thomas Simons, a money-market economist for Jefferies in New York.
From MarketWatch ● Mar. 30, 2026
Bond markets have been jumpy, reflecting the firmed-up rate hike expectations.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 9, 2025
"Both the US and Taiwan are paranoid and jumpy about Palau switching," said Graeme Smith, a senior fellow at the Australian National University.
From BBC ● Nov. 23, 2025
The absence of economic data until the end of the week is likely to make investors jumpy about earnings.
From Barron's ● Oct. 20, 2025
She was still real jumpy about having that snake around her wrist.
From "The Teacher’s Funeral" by Richard Peck
A bad week on Wall Street makes him jumpier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 13, 2026
The contrast remains the one between Odissi and Kandyan, which is looser and jumpier, sometimes jumping and turning at once.
From New York Times ● May 10, 2023
Notably, Walsh was considerably jumpier and more squeamish than Hancock, saying ahead of the challenge that he felt "petrified".
From BBC ● Nov. 9, 2022
When frames are dropped, the resulting video can look sped up and jumpier than the original.
From Washington Times ● Nov. 16, 2018
But I was glad Harry was not with me, for it was the kind of thing that would have made him jumpier than ever.
From Here and Hereafter by Pain, Barry
According to one widely held theory, she continued, the natural world encourages even the jumpiest among us to relax, slowing the onslaught of internal ruminations about every pressing concern, and letting our whirring brains quiet.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 12, 2023
The jumpiest is Marin Martinie’s “Apparition of Standard Figures,” in which emoticons flicker and frolic across the screen.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 23, 2021
We have been out since early morning on the jumpiest and beaniest of Waler mares.
From Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series by Aberigh-Mackay, George Robert
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.
