jive
/ˈd͡ʒaɪv/
jive verb: to deceive; to be deceptive.
Verb (1)
jive (third-person singular simple present jives, present participle jiving, simple past and past participle jived)
- To deceive; to be deceptive.
- Don’t try to jive me! I know where you were last night!
- It's the year when all of the white politicians will be back in the so-called Negro community jiving you and me for some votes.1964, Malcolm X, The Ballot or the Bullet
- To dance, originally to jive or swing music; later, to jazz, rock and roll, rhythm and blues, disco, etc.
- You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life; ooh, see that girl, watch that scene, diggin' the dancing queen!1976, “Dancing Queen”, performed by ABBA
- "Can you flamenco?" "If I have to. How about you?" "Love, I can barely waltz. Jive a bit if I'm pissed enough."2010, Peter Corris, Torn Apart, Allen and Unwin, page 212
- To speak in jive (jazz or hipster slang).
Noun
jive (countable and uncountable, plural jives)
- A dance style popular in the 1940–50s.
- Swing, a style of jazz music.
- A slang associated with jazz musicians; hepcat patois or hipster jargon.
- Then the loud sound did seem to fade / Came back like a slow voice on a wave of phase / That weren't no DJ, that was hazy cosmic jive1972, “Starman”, in The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, performed by David Bowie
- Synonym of bullshit: patent nonsense, transparently deceptive talk.
- Don’t give me that jive. I know where you were last night.
- African-American Vernacular English.
- Although speaking Western Japanese to your friends in Ōsaka, Kyōto, or Kōbe will allow you to get closer to them, speaking Western Japanese in Tōkyō might seem as outlandish as hearing a Japanese exchange student back home speaking jive or cockney.1993, Peter Tse, Kansai Japanese: The Language of Osaka, Kyoto, and Western Japan: This Japanese Phrasebook and Language Guide Teaches the Kansai Dialect, Tuttle Publishing, →ISBN, page 17
- "Oh come on," she said. "I heard you talking jive the other day when you were playing with your dolls. And back in February, when you recited that poem by, by—what was the poet's name?
"Langston Hughes?"
"Right, Langston Hughes," Kanta said. "You spoke jive when you read that poem, remember?"2019, Mathea Morais, There You Are, Amberjack Publishing, →ISBN
- Marijuana
Verb (2)
jive (third-person singular simple present jives, present participle jiving, simple past and past participle jived)
- To jibe: to accord, to agree.
jive meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Telugu and Kannada
jive in Urdu
- گمراہ کن بات چیت, جاز موسیقی پر رقص, بےوقوف بنانا, پریشان کرنا, تنگ کرنا
jive in Bengali
- জ্যাজবাদ্যের রীতিবিশেষ, উচ্চতালসমৃদ্ধ জনপ্রিয় সংগীত, জাজবাদ্যের সঙ্গে নাচা
jive in Telugu
- జీవ్
jive in Kannada
- ಬಿರುನಡೆಯ, ಶೀಘ್ರಗತಿಯ, ಚುರುಕಾದ ನೃತ್ಯ, ಚುರುಕಾದ ನರ್ತನ, ಜ್ಯಾಸ್ ಸಂಗೀತ, ಜೈವ್ ನರ್ತನ ಮಾಡು
Examples of jive in a sentence
- Ain't that the jivest crap you ever heard of?1968, Black World/Negro Digest, volume 17, number 8, page 81:
- A good right on for Roscoe Lee Browne who can take the jivest role Hollywood can dish out and still come out with his Blackness intact.1972, Jet, volume 41, number 22, page 60:
- Young man, I was once in your shoes / I said, I was down and out with the blues / I felt no man cared if I were alive / I felt the whole world was so jive1978 October, Jacques Morali, Victor Willis, “Y.M.C.A.”, in Cruisin', performed by Village People, track 1:
Synonyms of jive
Forms of jive
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | jives |
| present participle | jiving |
| past participle | jived |
| past | jived |
| Noun | |
| plural | jives |
| Adjective | |
| comparative | jiver |
| superlative | jivest |
Origin of jive
Unknown. Slang attested in African-American and rural American culture. Frequently used to imply lying, verbal deception or trickery. Has a possible historical antecedent in gyve (“shackle”). Alternatively, of African origin, compare Wolof jev, jeu (“to talk about someone absent, especially in a disparaging manner”).
Words formed from jive
Phrases with jive
Words that rhyme with jive
34 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about jive
- What does jive mean?
- Jive means to deceive; to be deceptive.
- What is jive in Urdu?
- Jive in Urdu is گمراہ کن بات چیت, جاز موسیقی پر رقص, بےوقوف بنانا. See Jive meaning in Urdu.
- How do you use jive in a sentence?
- Ain't that the jivest crap you ever heard of?
- What part of speech is jive?
- Jive can be a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce jive?
- Jive is pronounced /ˈd͡ʒaɪv/.
- What is the past tense of jive?
- The past tense of jive is jived.
Words near jive in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: jive (page history and authors); jive (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); jive (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); jive (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); jive (Kannada Wiktionary) (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.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-jive.wav.
Cite this entry: “jive.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/jive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.