jumbo
pronunciation
How to pronounce jumbo in British English:
UK [ˈdʒʌmbəʊ]
How to pronounce jumbo in American English:
US [ˈdʒʌmboʊ]
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- Adjective:
- of great mass; huge and bulky
Word Origin
- jumbo (adj.)
- "very large, unusually large for its type," 1882, a reference to Jumbo, name of the London Zoo's huge elephant (acquired from France, said to have been captured as a baby in Abyssinia in 1861), sold February 1882 to U.S. circus showman P.T. Barnum amid great excitement in America and great outcry in England, both fanned by Barnum. The name is perhaps from slang jumbo "clumsy, unwieldy fellow" (1823), which itself is possibly from a word for "elephant" in a West African language (compare Kongo nzamba). "I tell you conscientiously that no idea of the immensity of the animal can be formed. It is a fact that he is simply beyond comparison. The largest elephants I ever saw are mere dwarfs by the side of Jumbo." [P.T. Barnum, interview, "Philadelphia Press," April 22, 1882] As a product size, by 1886 (cigars). Jumbo jet attested by 1964.
Example
- 1. We construct the bank of china building in hong kong -- it looks like a scrunched up jumbo cigarette .
- 2. Ports needed to retool and install new , jumbo cranes , but more and more did so as they saw other containerized ports increase traffic .
- 3. Over the longer term , china has openly said it intends to replace both boeing and airbus by unveiling its own homegrown jumbo jet by 2020 .
- 4. For years , he was an international pariah blamed for the 1988 bombing of a pan am jumbo jet over lockerbie , scotland , that killed 270 people .
- 5. He was part of two project teams codenamed colorado and jumbo that advised citic resources on hedging and a bond offering related to the company 's investment in an oil field in kazakhstan .