jungle

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a style of dance music that fuses elements of hip-hop, hardcore, and ragga, consisting almost exclusively of very fast electronic drum tracks and slower synthesized bass lines

   I danced to jungle all night in Berlin.

2. 2
   noun

   an impenetrable equatorial forest

   This jungle is thick with insects and deadly snakes.

3. 3
   noun

   a place where hoboes camp

   I prefer the jungle on the east side of town.

4. 4
   noun

   a location marked by an intense competition and struggle for survival

   The stock market is a jungle.

5. 5
   noun

   A large, undeveloped, humid forest, especially in a tropical region, that is home to many wild plants and animals; a tropical rainforest.

   As Tarzan walked down the wild cañon beneath the brilliant African moon the call of the jungle was strong upon him. The solitude and the savage freedom filled his heart with life and buoyancy. Again he was Tarzan of the Apes—every sense alert against the chance of surprise by some jungle enemy—yet treading lightly and with head erect, in proud consciousness of his might.

6. 6
   noun

   A place where people behave ruthlessly, unconstrained by law or morality.

   It’s a jungle out there.

7. 7
   noun

   A tangled mess.

   […] lost in such a jungle of intrigues, pettifoggings, treacheries, diplomacies domestic and foreign […]

8. 8
   noun

   A style of electronic dance music and precursor of drum and bass.

   Always more multiracial than other post-Rave scenes, Hardcore got “blacker” as hiphop, Ragga, dub and Soul influences kicked in, and by 93 it had evolved into Jungle. By this point, Hardcore/Jungle (the terms remain interchangeable) was universally scorned by dance hipsters and banished from the media.

Etymology

Borrowed from Hindustani جَن٘گَل (jaṅgal) / जंगल (jaṅgal), from Sanskrit जङ्गल (jaṅgala, “arid, sterile, desert”). First appears c. 1776 in a translation by Nathaniel Halhed.