Jumbo Meaning
/ˈd͡ʒʌmbəʊ/Definition, CEFR level B2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
adjEspecially large or powerful.
nounAn especially large or powerful person, animal, or thing.
Sentence Examples
No pro golfer in Japan is as popular as Jumbo Ozaki.
The jumbo jet touched down thundering.
His jumbo jet ought to have arrived in Osaka now.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The airline introduced a new ____ jet that can carry over 600 passengers.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The restaurant sells a ____ shrimp cocktail that is large enough to be a whole meal for one person.
Word Origin & History
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”).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"At Bucyrus, Ohio, M. C. Coulter this season has demonstrated that he can grow a nice crop of the jumbo variety of peanuts."
— 1919 May, Peanut Promoter, volume 2, number 6, Chicago, Ill.: Lightner Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 102, column 2:
"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."
— 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:
"Not only did Jumbo-mania make [Phineas Taylor] Barnum a jumbo profit, but the word "jumbo" entered the English language."
— 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:
"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."
— 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 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."
— 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:
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CEFR Practice Quiz
The airline introduced a new ____ jet that can carry over 600 passengers.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The restaurant sells a ____ shrimp cocktail that is large enough to be a whole meal for one person.