Word.ws English Dictionary

jemmy

jemmy noun: a sheep's head used as food. Also the alternative spelling of jimmy.

Noun

jemmy (plural jemmies)

  1. (Ireland, UK, archaic, slang) A sheep's head used as food.
  2. (Australia, slang) An immigrant.
  3. (obsolete, slang) A greatcoat.
    • your friend in the green jemmy1836 March – 1837 October, Charles Dickens, “(please specify the chapter name)”, in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1837, →OCLC

Verb

jemmy (third-person singular simple present jemmies, present participle jemmying, simple past and past participle jemmied)

  1. To shoehorn, to cram.
    • two thousand people jemmied into a stadium built for fifteen hundred

Adjective

jemmy (comparative jemmier, superlative jemmiest)

  1. (archaic) Neat; elegant.
    • I was agreeably surprised by seeing my young friend and companion, Robert Pott, driving up the avenue in a very jemmy equipage.1808–10, William Hickey, Memoirs of a Georgian Rake, Folio Society 1995, p. 209

Proper noun capitalized: Jemmy

Jemmy

  1. A diminutive of the male given name James.
    • Joly Jemmy, [i.e. James IV of Scotland] ye scornefull Scot,
      Is it come unto your lot
      A solempne sumner for to be?1513, John Skelton, Agaynst the Scottes; republished in John Scattergood, editor, John Skelton: The Complete English Poems, 1983, →OCLC, page 116, lines 49–51

Also used as

jemmy is also the alternative spelling of jimmy.

Forms of jemmy

Noun
pluraljemmies
Verb
third-person singular presentjemmies
present participlejemmying
past participlejemmied
pastjemmied
Adjective
comparativejemmier
superlativejemmiest

Origin of jemmy

From Jemmy, diminutive of James. The verb is from the noun.

From a variant of gim + -y.

From Jem + -y.

Words formed from jemmy

Phrases with jemmy

Words that rhyme with jemmy

Questions about jemmy

What does jemmy mean?
Jemmy means a sheep's head used as food.
What part of speech is jemmy?
Jemmy can be a noun, a verb, an adjective or a proper noun.
What is the plural of jemmy?
The plural of jemmy is jemmies.

Words near jemmy in the dictionary

  1. jemmiest
  2. jemmily
  3. jemminess
  4. Jemmott
  5. Jemmotts
  6. jemmy
  7. Jemmy Ducks
  8. Jemmy Jessamies
  9. Jemmy Jessamy
  10. Jemmy's Cove
  11. Jemmy-Jessamies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: jemmy (page history and authors); Jemmy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-jemmy.ogg.

Cite this entry: “jemmy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/jemmy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.