# jungle

Pronunciation: say "JUNG-guhl" /ˈd͡ʒʌŋ.ɡ(ə)l/

## Noun

1. A large, undeveloped, humid forest, especially a tropical rainforest, where many wild plants and animals live.
   - Simple: A big, wild, wet forest, often in a hot part of the world, where many 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._
2. A place where people act ruthlessly, held back by neither law nor morality. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: A place where people are hard and cruel to each other and ignore the law and what is right.
   - _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._
3. Any stretch of uncultivated land covered with forest or scrub. *(South Asia)*
   - Simple: Any wild land with trees or bushes that no one farms.
   - _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._
4. A tangled and confusing mess of things.
   - Simple: A messy mix of things that are all tangled together.
   - _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._
5. A style of electronic dance music that was a forerunner of drum and bass.
   - Simple: A kind of electronic dance music that led to the style called 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._
6. In golf, an area of very thick, dense rough. *(slang)*
   - Simple: In golf, very thick, long grass beside the main path of short grass.
   - _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._
8. A place where hobos gather to camp together. *(slang)*
   - Simple: A place where people with no home who travel from town to town 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._
9. A thick, dense growth of pubic hair. *(slang)*
   - Simple: Thick hair that grows around a person's private parts.
   - _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._

## Adjective

7. Of 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.
   - Simple: Describes a strong drum beat based on an old, sometimes offensive idea of music played by people living in forests.
   - _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._

## 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.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/jungle (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).