jungle
Pluraljungles
Pluraljungles
- 1A large, undeveloped, humid forest, especially a tropical rainforest, where many wild plants and animals live.
The expedition spent three weeks hacking a path through dense jungle.
Jaguars still hunt in the remote jungles of Central America.
UsageCommon patterns: in the jungle, through dense jungle, the jungles of a region.
Similarrainforest, forest
Note
Behind the steamy forest stands a word for dry land: Sanskrit jaṅgala meant "arid, sterile, desert", and English borrowed jaṅgal from Hindustani. An early recorded use appears in a 1776 translation by Nathaniel Halhed. What survived the journey was the idea of land left uncultivated, which the South Asian "wild land" meaning still keeps.
- 2A place where people act ruthlessly, held back by neither law nor morality.
The housing market here is a jungle, and first-time buyers get eaten alive.
Reporters who survived the tabloid jungle of the 1980s rarely trusted anyone.
UsageCommon in it's a jungle out there, a warning that nobody else will look after you.
Similarfree-for-all, battleground
- 3Any stretch of uncultivated land covered with forest or scrub.
Beyond the last paddy fields, the land turns to thorny jungle where goats graze.
The new highway was cut straight through miles of scrub jungle.
Note
In South Asian English the word stretches well beyond rainforest: thorny scrub, open woodland and thick forest all count, as long as nobody farms them. A reader from elsewhere should not picture vines and steam when the jungle at the edge of a village turns out to be dry, uncleared grazing land.
- 4A tangled and confusing mess of things.
Small businesses struggle to find their way through the jungle of state and federal regulations.
The garage had become a jungle of old bikes, garden hoses and paint cans.
UsageUsually a jungle of things: a jungle of wires, a jungle of regulations.
- 5A style of electronic dance music that was a forerunner of drum and bass.
The DJ switched from house to jungle, and the dance floor filled up.
She still collects old jungle records from the early nineties.
Note
Rave hardcore turned into this style as hip hop, ragga, dub and soul fed into it; by 1993 the new name had taken hold, and for a while hardcore and jungle named the same sound. Simon Reynolds, writing in The Wire in 1994, capitalizes it as Jungle.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Jungle developed from rave hardcore with influences from hip hop, ragga, dub and soul, and had emerged by 1993. thewire.co.uk
- Hardcore and jungle were temporarily interchangeable names. thewire.co.uk
- Simon Reynolds used the capitalization Jungle in an article originally published in The Wire in September 1994. en.wiktionary.org
Less common meanings
- 6In golf, an area of very thick, dense rough.
One wild drive put him deep in the jungle on the left side of the fairway.
He spent three shots hacking his way out of the jungle beside the fourth hole.
Similarrough
Note
Golfers keep the word for rough thick enough to grab the club and twist the shot, not the thin, weedy kind that often still leaves a decent lie. Rob Blumer and Rex Chaney put the line at grass above four inches. Tiger country is another joking name for the same trouble.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 1 fact
- Rob Blumer and Rex Chaney describe grass above four inches as troublesome rough that grabs the club and alters shots. en.wiktionary.org
- 7Of a beat or rhythm, driving and drum-heavy in a way meant to suggest the music of forest peoples, a stereotyped image now often seen as dated or racially loaded.
The old film score leans on pounding jungle rhythms whenever the explorers enter the forest.
A drummer in the corner kept up a jungle beat on a pair of tom-toms.
UsageUsed in phrases such as jungle beat and jungle rhythms. It can carry dated racial stereotypes.
Note
The idea behind it is a stereotype of wild, primitive drumming. The same picture shaped 1920s talk of jungle music, the growling jazz Duke Ellington's band played at Harlem's whites-only Cotton Club, where shows and decor portrayed Black people as jungle savages. For that reason the adjective can read as racially loaded today. Near dance music it can also blur into the electronic style.
- 8A place where hobos gather to camp together.
He hopped off the freight train and followed the smell of coffee to the jungle under the bridge.
The jungles along the rail line were full of men looking for seasonal work.
Similarcamp, encampment
Note
Hobo slang keeps the word for one kind of place: a camp that people on the road share, where they stop to eat and sleep together, not wild country and not just any campsite.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- Hobo jungles provide places for travelers to camp, cook, and sleep. gutenberg.org
- 9A thick, dense growth of pubic hair.
Before her beach trip she booked a wax, joking that the jungle had gotten out of hand.
His tiny swim trunks did nothing to hide the jungle, and his friends never let him forget it.
Similarbush
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Origin
Sanskrit jaṅgala (जङ्गल, “arid, sterile, desert”) gave Hindustani jaṅgal (جَن٘گَل / जंगल), from which English borrowed the word. One early recorded use occurs in Nathaniel Halhed’s translation published in 1776.