Word.ws English Dictionary

phantom jams

phantom jams is the plural of phantom jam.

Meaning of phantom jam

Noun

phantom jam (plural phantom jams)

  1. A slowdown in traffic that occurs without an apparent reason.
    • Eventually, the phantom jam always dissolves. Sometimes the phantom jams are large and sometimes they are small.1996, Achim Bachem, Dietrich E Wolf, Michael Schreckenberg (editors), Traffic And Granular Flow, page 76
  2. A traffic jam that appears at a distance on a highway, but in reality is an optical illusion.

Questions about phantom jams

What is phantom jams the plural of?
Phantom jams is the plural of phantom jam.

Words near phantom jams in the dictionary

  1. phantom goal
  2. phantom goals
  3. phantom island
  4. phantom islands
  5. phantom jam
  6. phantom jams
  7. phantom limb
  8. phantom limbs
  9. phantom midge
  10. phantom midges
  11. phantom orchid

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: phantom jams (page history and authors); phantom jam (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: “phantom jams.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/phantom_jams. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.