Word.ws English Dictionary

jumpscare

jumpscare is the alternative form of jump scare.

Meaning of jump scare

Noun

jump scare (plural jump scares)

  1. A sudden, unexpected and startling event in media designed to frighten the audience.
    • They'd do something horrible, maybe kill off a few protagonists, and then make people sit around waiting for the next terrible thing to come along. They called it “setting up a jump scare.”2011, Mira Grant, Deadline, Orbit, published 2011, →ISBN
  2. (broadly, figuratively, humorous) The sudden arrival or advent of something unpleasant.
    • white woman jump scare
  3. (figuratively) A fright caused by this.
    • The loud knock at the door gave me a terrible jump scare.

See all 4 meanings of jump scare

Forms of jumpscare

Noun
pluraljumpscares
Verb
third-person singular presentjumpscares
present participlejumpscaring
past participlejumpscared
pastjumpscared

Origin of jumpscare

From jump + scare.

Questions about jumpscare

What is jumpscare the alternative form of?
Jumpscare is the alternative form of jump scare.

Words near jumpscare in the dictionary

  1. jumps to
  2. jumps to conclusions
  3. jumps to it
  4. jumps up
  5. jumps upon
  6. jumpscare
  7. jumpscared
  8. jumpscares
  9. jumpscaring
  10. jumpseat
  11. jumpseating

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: jumpscare (page history and authors); jump scare (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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Cite this entry: “jumpscare.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/jumpscare. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.