jostle

Originally justle (“to have sex with”), formed from Middle English jousten, from the Old French joster (“to joust”), from Latin iuxtā (“next to”), from iungō (“join, connect”), equivalent to joust +‎ -le.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈd͡ʒɒs.əl/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈd͡ʒɑ.səl/

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• Rhymes: -ɒsəl

jostle (third-person singular simple present jostles, present participle jostling, simple past and past participle jostled)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To bump into or brush against while in motion; to push aside.
   • 1791 (date written), Mary Wollstonecraft, chapter 13, in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, 1st American edition, Boston, Mass.: […] Peter Edes for Thomas and Andrews, […], published 1792, →OCLC:

     Besides, various are the paths to power and fame which by accident or choice men pursue, and though they jostle against each other, for men of the same profession are seldom friends, yet there is a much greater number of their fellow-creatures with whom they never clash. But women are very differently situated with respect to each other—for they are all rivals.

   • 1832, [Isaac Taylor], “Chapter 12”, in Saturday Evening. […], London: Holdsworth and Ball, →OCLC, page 214:

     It is not that there are several systems of movement, physical, intellectual, and moral, which are perpetually jostling each other, or which clash whenever they come in contact, and which move on by the one vanquishing the other. But, on the contrary, each of these economies takes its uninterrupted course, as if there were no other moving within the same space […]

   • 1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter 3, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volumes (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC, pages 370-371:

     […] when the lord of a Lincolnshire or Shropshire manor appeared in Fleet Street, he was as easily distinguished from the resident population as a Turk or a Lascar. […] Bullies jostled him into the kennel. Hackney coachmen splashed him from head to foot. […]

   • 1918, Gerard Manley Hopkins, “[Poem 63]”, in Robert Bridges, editor, Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins: Now First Published […], London: Humphrey Milford, →OCLC, page 83:

     His locks […] / […] like a juicy and jostling shock / Of bluebells sheaved in May

2. (intransitive) To move through by pushing and shoving.
   • 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise‎, Book One, Chapter 3:

     Axia and Amory, acquaintances of an hour, jostled behind a waiter to a table at a point of vantage; there they took seats and watched.

3. (transitive) To be close to or in physical contact with.
   • 1859 November 24, Charles Darwin, “Natural Selection”, in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, […], London: John Murray, […], →OCLC, page 114:

     […] the advantages of diversification of structure, with the accompanying differences of habit and constitution, determine that the inhabitants, which thus jostle each other most closely, shall, as a general rule, belong to what we call different genera and orders.

4. (intransitive) To contend or vie in order to acquire something.
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     1819, Jedadiah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], chapter I, in Tales of My Landlord, Third Series. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC, page 22:

     Dick, who, in serious earnest, was supposed to have considerable natural talents for his profession, and whose vain and sanguine disposition never permitted him to doubt for a moment of ultimate success, threw himself headlong into the crowd which jostled and struggled for notice and preferment.

   • 1917, Rudyard Kipling, “The Children,” poem accompanying the story “The Honours of War” in A Diversity of Creatures, London: Macmillan, pp. 129-130,

     […] Our statecraft, our learning

     Delivered them bound to the Pit and alive to the burning

     Whither they mirthfully hastened as jostling for honour.

   • 2021 October 20, Paul Stephen, “Leisure and pleasure on the Far North Line”, in RAIL, number 942, page 47:

     The relative popularity of the Kyle of Lochalsh service is unsurprising, given how the famous route jostles with the West Highland Line for the title of Scotland's (and indeed the world's) most scenic rail journey.

5. (dated, slang) To pick or attempt to pick pockets.

• justle
• joust

jostle (plural jostles)

1. The act of jostling someone or something; push, shove.
   • 1722, Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders, London: J. Cooke, 1765, p. 241,

     I had full hold of her Watch, but giving a great Jostle, as if somebody had thrust me against her, and in the Juncture giving the Watch a fair pull, I found it would not come, so I let it go that Moment, and cried out as if I had been killed, that somebody had trod upon my Foot […]

2. The action of a jostling crowd.
   • 1865, Harriet Beecher Stowe (under the pseudonym Christopher Crowfield), The Chimney-Corner, Boston: Ticknor & Field, 1868, Chapter 12, p. 291,

     For years to come, the average of lone women will be largely increased; and the demand, always great, for some means by which they many provide for themselves, in the rude jostle of the world, will become more urgent and imperative.