Also 9 jangal, jingle, jungul. [a. Hindī and Marāṭhī jangal desert, waste, forest, Skr. jaṇgala dry, dry ground, desert.
The change in Anglo-Indian use may be compared to that in the historical meaning of the word forest in its passage from a waste or unenclosed tract to one covered with wild wood. In the transferred sense of jungle there is app. a tendency to associate it with tangle.]
1. In India, originally, as a native word, Waste or uncultivated ground (= ‘forest’ in the original sense); then, such land overgrown with brushwood, long grass, etc.; hence, in Anglo-Indian use, a. Land overgrown with underwood, long grass, or tangled vegetation; also, the luxuriant and often almost impenetrable growth of vegetation covering such a tract. b. with a and pl. A particular tract or piece of land so covered; esp. as the dwelling-place of wild beasts.
a. 1776. N. B. Halhed, Gentoo Code, xiii. 190. Land Waste for Five Years … is called Jungle.
c. 1813. Mrs. Sherwood, Ayah & Lady, ix. 52. The banks were covered with thick jungle down to the very brink of the water. Ibid., Gloss., Jungle, brushwood, or very high grass.
1853. Sir H. Douglas, Milit. Bridges, 128. In loading and unloading, in moving through jungle.
1900. D. G. Churcher, in Blackw. Mag., May, 640/2. I have recounted my wanderings and concealment for safety in the fields of jhow and jangal.
b. 1783. Burke, Sp. India Bill, Wks. IV. 24. That land … is now almost throughout a dreary desart, covered with rushes, and briers, and jungles full of wild beasts.
1804. W. Austin, Lett. fr. London, 167, note. Cornwallis wrote … that three fifths of the … territory has become a Jingle, that is deserted by the natives, and possessed by—wild beasts.
1858. J. B. Norton, Topics, 275. Transforming uninhabitable jungles into well cultivated plantations.
1889. R. S. S. Baden-Powell, Pigsticking, 45. A somewhat similar manner of beating is employed in the case of canal bank jungles.
c. Extended to similar tracts in other lands, especially tropical.
1849. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., v. I. 603. It [Sedgemoor] was a vast pool, wherein were scattered many islets of shifting and treacherous soil, overhung with rank jungle.
1851. Layard, Pop. Acc. Discov. Nineveh, i. 4. We passed the night in the jungle which clothes the banks of the river.
1856. Stanley, Sinai & Pal., vii. 282. The Jordan … threading its tortuous way through its tropical jungle.
1865. Livingstone, Zambesi, x. 214. Our course passed though a dense thorn jungle.
2. transf. and fig. A wild, tangled mass.
1850. Carlyle, Latter-d. Pamph., iii. (1872), 74. What a world-wide jungle of redtape.
1853. Kane, Grinnell Exp., xlvii. (1856), 433. We could see the perfect jungle of sea-weed that was growing under us.
1879. Academy, 10 May, 412/2. In that tangled jungle of disconnected precedents [Digest of Justinian].
1897. Mary Kingsley, W. Africa, xxi. 493. Out of the luxuriant jungle of information that followed I gathered that no man’s soul dallies below long.
b. The Jungle (Stock Exch. slang): the West African share market: cf. jungle-market in 3 b.
Mod. Newspr. Signs of renewed activity in the jungle.
3. attrib. and Comb.: simple attrib., as jungle-bush, -fire, -folk, -grass, -growth, -land, -life, -people, -side, -tale, -tribe; instrumental, as jungle-clad, -covered, -worn, adjs.; locative, as jungle-travelling, -trudging, -walking.
1884. Mrs. M. Mitchell, in Sunday at Home, June, 398–9. We crept under the shade of a thick crop of thorny *jungle-bush.
1900. Daily News, 30 July, 6/3. Mr. H. C. P. Bell has done much in excavating the *jungle-clad remains of Anuradhapura.
1886. Sacrifice of India, 53. *Jungle-covered wastes of abandoned cornfields.
1889. R. S. S. Baden-Powell, Pigsticking, 37. The destruction of his home by *jungle-fire or flood.
1810. Southey, Kehama, XIII. vii. The tall *jungle-grass fit roofing gave Beneath that genial sky.
1897. Mary Kingsley, W. Africa, 573. We clamber up into the long jungle grass region.
1894. Athenæum, 5 May, 572/1. The *jungle-growth of seventeenth and eighteenth century dreaming has been … cleared away.
1889. R. S. S. Baden-Powell, Pigsticking, 14. Government will … foster the sport by the grant of waste *jungle lands to serve as preserves.
1894. R. Kipling, 2nd Jungle Book (1895), 14. He made the First of the Tigers … the judge of the Jungle, to whom the *Jungle People should bring their disputes.
1845. Stocqueler, Handbk. Brit. India (1854), 322. Nags unworthy to contest the glories of either the turf or the *‘jungle-side.’
1866. C. Brooke, Saráwak, I. 30. I did not admire Bornean *jungle-trudging.
1889. R. Kipling, Fr. Sea to Sea (1900), I. 229. Old friends, now *jungle-worn men of war.
b. Special comb.: esp. in specific names of animals inhabiting the jungles of India, as jungle-hog, jungle-peacock; jungle-bear, the Sloth-bear of India, Prochilus labiatus; jungle-cat, the Marsh-lynx, Felis chaus; jungle-cock, the male jungle-fowl; jungle-fever, a form of remittent fever caused by the miasma of a jungle; the hill-fever of India; jungle-fowl, (a) an East Indian bird of the genus Gallus, esp. G. ferrugineus (G. bankiva); (b) a mound-bird of Australia, as Megapodius timulus; jungle-hen, the female jungle-fowl (b); jungle-market (Stock Exchange), the market in shares of West African Companies; jungle-nail, an East Indian tree, Acacia tomentosa (Treas. Bot., 1866); jungle-ox, the gayal, Bibos sylhetanus; jungle poultry, jungle-fowls; jungle-rice, the millet-rice, Panicum colonum; jungle-sheep, an Indian ruminant, Kemas hypocrinus; jungle-wood (see quot.).
1895. I. Petrie, in Life, ix. (1900), 199. A huge *jungle-cat, who had discovered the milk-jug.
1803. Syd. Smith, Ceylon, Wks. 1867, I. 43. A low and malignant fever, known to Europeans by the name of the *jungle-fever.
1894. Fenn, In Alpine Valley, I. 24. I’m burnt up with the cursed old jungle fever.
1824–5. Heber, Narr. Journey (1828), I. xviii. 508. A small flock or covey of *jungle fowl … crowing and cackling. My companions were not able to tell me whether the jungle poultry had ever been tamed.
1871. Mateer, Travancore, 2. The jungle fowl, a small bird with brilliant plumage, is perhaps the original of the common domestic fowl.
1893. Newton, Dict. Birds, 289. Of the genus Gallus … four well-marked species are known. The first of these is the Red Jungle-Fowl of the greater part of India, G. ferrugineus … which is almost undoubtedly the parent stock of all the domestic races.
1890. Lumholtz, Cannibals, 97. The jungle-hens (mound builders) … The bird is of a brownish hue, with yellow legs and immensely large feet; hence its name Megapodius.
1845. Stocqueler, Handbk. Brit. India (1854), 292. Deer of the largest kind, bisons, bears, *jungle hog.
1900. Westm. Gaz., 12 Oct., 9/1. The new *Jungle Market, or Assis Market, as it has been called because of the number of companies whose names bear the affix assis. Ibid., 16 Oct., 9/1. With all its prospectusless companies the Jungle Market is a regular Monte Carlo.
1837. Lett. fr. Madras, xiii. (1843), 118. I am taming some fine *jungle peacocks.
1886. A. H. Church, Food Grains Ind., 50. This millet [Shama] sometimes called ‘Wild Rice’ or *‘Jungle Rice,’ is a poor food.
1880. C. R. Markham, Peruv. Bark, 357. The karamarda (Terminalia coriacea), called *‘jungle-wood,’ with bark very rough and cracked in squares, like a tortoise’s back.
