Word.ws English Dictionary

jump the shark

jump the shark verb: of television program or other narrative, to undergo a storyline development which heralds a fundamental and generally disappointing change in direction.

Verb

jump the shark (third-person singular simple present jumps the shark, present participle jumping the shark, simple past and past participle jumped the shark)

  1. (idiomatic) Of television program or other narrative, to undergo a storyline development which heralds a fundamental and generally disappointing change in direction.
    • Happy Days infamously jumped the shark when Fonzie literally jumped a shark on water skis. I Love Lucy jumped the shark when Lucy and Ricky moved to the suburbs. The Brady Bunch jumped the shark when Cousin Oliver moved in.2003, Jon Hein, Jump the Shark, book overview (revised edition; Plume; →ISBN, 9780452284104)
    • From that point on, Dallas was never the same. It hit its peak. It lost credibility. It jumped the shark.2004, Ronn Owens, Voice of Reason: Why the Left and Right Are Wrong, John Wiley & Sons, published 2004, →ISBN, page 212
  2. (broadly, idiomatic) To experience a decline in quality, appeal, popularity, etc.
    • Pintsize: Wait, don’t you want to know why I’m tied up and hanging from the ceiling?
      Faye: Not really. Nighty night!
      Pintsize: Shit! My wacky antics have jumped the shark!2007, Jeph Jacques, “Time To Add A Cute Kid To The Cast”, in Questionable Content, number 951
    • The Bangles were a fine all-woman band, starting with a lovely cover of Prince's "Manic Monday." "Walk Like an Egyptian" was cute, and the ladies rocked out an unlikely cover of Simon and Garfunkel's "Hazy Shade of Winter." But they jumped the shark with the treacly "Eternal Flame," and the end of...2008, Mark Fogarty, Went to See the Gypsy, Lulu.com, published 2008, →ISBN, page 150

Forms of jump the shark

third-person singular presentjumps the shark
present participlejumping the shark
past participlejumped the shark
pastjumped the shark

Origin of jump the shark

From Hollywood (Part 3), an episode in 1977 during the fifth season of the American television series Happy Days, in which the character Fonzie jumped over a shark on waterskis. The expression argues that it was at this point that the show bore no similarity to its original form.

Words formed from jump the shark

Questions about jump the shark

What does jump the shark mean?
Jump the shark means of television program or other narrative, to undergo a storyline development which heralds a fundamental and generally disappointing change in direction.
What part of speech is jump the shark?
Jump the shark is a verb.
What is the past tense of jump the shark?
The past tense of jump the shark is jumped the shark.

Words near jump the shark in the dictionary

  1. jump the lights
  2. jump the line
  3. jump the queue
  4. jump the rattler
  5. jump the reservation
  6. jump the shark
  7. jump through hoops
  8. jump to
  9. jump to conclusions
  10. jump to it
  11. jump trainer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: jump the shark (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-jump the shark.ogg.

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