jumbo

A c. 1882 poster published by the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus showing Jumbo the elephant and his keeper Matthew Scott

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈd͡ʒʌmbəʊ/

• Audio (RP)

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈd͡ʒʌmboʊ/

• Audio (GA)

  (file)

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌmbəʊ
• Hyphenation: jum‧bo

From Jumbo (1860–1885), the name given to a large African elephant from East Africa that was purchased in 1882 by American showman P. T. Barnum (1810–1891) for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Compare Swahili jambo (“matter, thing”) and jumbe (“chief, headman”).

jumbo (not comparable)

1. Especially large or powerful.
   • 1919 May, Peanut Promoter, volume 2, number 6, Chicago, Ill.: Lightner Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 102, column 2:

     At Bucyrus, Ohio, M. C. Coulter this season has demonstrated that he can grow a nice crop of the jumbo variety of peanuts.

   • 1941 September, Harold J[ohnson] Clay, “Secondary Distribution”, in Marketing Peanuts and Peanut Products (Miscellaneous Publication; no. 416), Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Agriculture, →OCLC, page 58:

     Of the receipts of unshelled peanuts only a few extras are now being bought, the remainder being divided rather equally between jumbo and fancy grades.

   • 1989 May, Nino Lo Bello, “Jumbo the Great Saves a Friend”, in William B. McMorris, editor, Boys’ Life, Irving, Tx.: Boy Scouts of America, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 11, columns 2–3:

     Not only did Jumbo-mania make [Phineas Taylor] Barnum a jumbo profit, but the word "jumbo" entered the English language.

   • 1993 July, Gerald Bard Tjoflat, “More Judges, Less Justice: The Case against Expansion of the Federal Judiciary”, in ABA Journal: The Lawyer’s Magazine, volume 79, Chicago, Ill.: American Bar Association, →ISSN, →OCLC:

     As the number of judges on an appellate court increases, the court evolves into what I call a "jumbo court." First, the dynamics of a jumbo court are such that, as the court grows larger, the productivity of individual judges on the court declines.

   • 2015, Zafar Gilani, Abdul Salam, Salman Ul Haq, “Diagnosis and Performance Monitoring”, in Deploying and Managing a Cloud Infrastructure: Real World Skills for the CompTIA Cloud+™ Certification and Beyond, Indianapolis, Ind.: Sybex, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, pages 134–135:

     As the name suggests, jumbo frames are frames with a larger size compared to the standard MTU [maximum transmission unit]. Sending data in jumbo frames means there are fewer frames sent through the network, resulting in fewer IRQs [interrupt requests] at the receiving end. This obviously generates big improvements in terms of bandwidth and CPU [central processing unit] cycles.

A drilling jumbo (noun sense 3) used in the construction of the Stockholm City Line railway tunnel in Stockholm, Sweden

jumbo (countable and uncountable, plural jumbos)

1. An especially large or powerful person, animal, or thing.
   • [1894 December 12, “Proceedings of the Twenty-eighth Annual Meeting of the Ohio State Horticultural Society, Held at McCoy Post Hall, Columbus, Ohio, Wednesday, December 12th, 1894”, in Forty-ninth Annual Report of the Ohio State Board of Agriculture […], for the Year 1894. […], volume 49, Columbus, Oh.: J. L. Trauger, state printer, published 1895, →OCLC, page 71:

     I purchased a vine, and was rather impressed with the appearance of the grape; so I took the time to go down to see the vine, the Jumbo [a cultivar of muscadine, Vitis rotundifolia], and I saw a very large vine, trained on an arbor, perhaps covering a space of fifteen to twenty feet square, with the clusters hanging down through the lattice work; […]]

   • 2002, Appita Journal: Journal of the Technical Association of the Australian and New Zealand Pulp and Paper Industry, volume 55, Parkville, Vic.: Technical Association of the Australian and New Zealand Pulp and Paper Industry, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 65, column 3:

     It is important to realise that slabbing may occur at any stage of the processing of a jumbo [large roll of paper from which smaller rolls are cut]. Typically slabbing becomes necessary when the reel being wound up has reached its required length and the jumbo has only a small contiguous length left on the spindle.

2. (Kenya) An elephant.
3. (engineering) A platform-mounted machine for drilling rock.

   Synonym: drilling jumbo

   • 1942 January, H. E. Robinson, “Tucumcari Tunnel Construction”, in The Reclamation Era, volume 32, number 1, Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Reclamation, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 11, column 3:

     In all three tunnels the full face was drilled at once. […] [T]he mucking machine was immediately converted into a drilling jumbo upon completion of the mucking operation. Both jumbos carried all the posts and bars necessary for the mounting in any desired position of four automatic DA-30 drifters.

   • 1946, Mine and Quarry Engineering, London: Electrical Press, →OCLC, page 67:

     The curtailment of drilling because of a disruption of the loading cycle is far less likely with the jumbo than with post and tripod drilling, because from three to five working places are available to the jumbo, whereas only one or, at the most, two faces can be worked by one crew with the old method.

4. (Western Pennsylvania) Synonym of bologna (“type of meat”)

• Jumbomania

From (mumbo) jumbo.

jumbo (plural jumbos)

1. (paganism, historical) Short for mumbo jumbo (“a deity or other supernatural being worshipped by certain West African peoples; an idol representing such a being”).
   • 1806, William Young, “A Tour through the Several Islands of Barbadoes, St. Vincent, Antigua, Tobago, and Grenada, in the Years 1791 & 1792”, in Bryan Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies. […] In Four Volumes, volume IV, Philadelphia, Pa.: Printed and sold by James Humphreys, […], →OCLC, page 257:

     Returning to the villa, we were greeted by a party which frightened the boys. It was the Moco Jumbo and his suite. The Jumbo was on stilts, with a head, mounted on the actor's head, which was concealed: the music was from two baskets, like strawberry baskets, with little bells within, shook in time. The swordsman danced with an air of menace, the musician was comical, and Jumbo assumed the "antic terrible," and was very active on his stilts.

   • 1845 April, “Delta” [pseudonym], “Krooman versus Boobie. A Scene at Fernando Po.”, in P. L. Simmonds, editor, Simmond’s Colonial Magazine and Foreign Miscellany, volume IV, number 16, London: Simmonds & Ward, […], →ISSN, →OCLC, pages 487–488:

     [A]nother Krooman came hurrying up, holding out a wooden image with a few bits of grass round its neck, and exclaiming, "Wurra! Wurra! Jumbo hang in fetische-house, sure he make much finish die." […] Jumbo was an uncouthly-carved figure of a man, about a foot in height, sitting cross-legged like a tailor, with ears preposterously large, the Kroo mark down the forehead and nose, and a piece of looking-glass fixed in the thorax and abdomen.

• drilling jumbo on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Jumbo (elephant) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• jumbo (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• IPA^(key): /ˈjumbo/, [ˈjumbo̞]
• Rhymes: -umbo
• Syllabification^(key): jum‧bo

After the circus elephant of the same name, as elephants are considered slow. A similar expression is found in Swedish jumbo. For the origin of the name, see English jumbo.

jumbo (informal)

1. last, last one, especially in a competition

   Hän jäi kilpailussa jumboksi.

   He came last in the competition.

   Olin jumbo.

   I was the last one.

• viimeinen (adjective)

Semantic loan from English jumbo, from the same origin as above.

jumbo

1. jumbo jet

   Synonym: jumbojetti

2. Ellipsis of porausjumbo (drilling jumbo).
3. (as modifier) very large

   jumbokoko ― jumbo size

• “jumbo”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish]‎ (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 2024-01-01

From English jumbo ("An especially large or powerful person, animal or thing").

jumbo m (definite singular jumboen, indefinite plural jumboer, definite plural jumboene)

1. a person or team that finishes last (in competitions)

   Bli jumbo ― Come last

• jumboplass

• “jumbo” in The Bokmål Dictionary.
• “jumbo” in Det Norske Akademis ordbok (NAOB).

From English jumbo ("An especially large or powerful person, animal or thing").

jumbo m (definite singular jumboen, indefinite plural jumboar, definite plural jumboane)

1. a person or team that finishes last (in competitions)

• jumboplass

• “jumbo” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.