puddle-jump

puddle-jump noun: a short airplane flight.

Noun

puddle-jump (plural puddle-jumps)

(attributive, usually) A short airplane flight
- We've waited longer than that for space for a puddle-jump in the U. S.1947, American Aviation - Volume 11, page 25
- And the flight was a long puddle-jump: three-and-a-half hours to Marquette (another Upper Peninsula town), and a layover there before continuing to Hancock.1995, George P. Schwartz, Shareholder rebellion
(attributive, usually) A short trip by boat.
- It was no puddle-jump to the next harbor — the water route curved north and west around a peninsula of land marked Punta Eugenia.1986, Valerie Fons, Keep it Moving: Baja by Canoe, page 132
(attributive, usually) A small difference.
- Many baseball players have openly used androstenedione, a muscle-building compound that major league baseball hasn't banned even though it's merely a molecular puddle-jump from anabolic steroids.2007, Eileen Daniel, Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Health and Society, →ISBN, page 265

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

To take a short flight.
- Or suppose at that early hour he'd been forced to fly into Chicago; would he puddle-jump in on a commuter flight or rent a car for the four-hour drive?1984, Tony Chiu, Realm Seven, page 117
- Is there any chance you all can puddle-jump to the reunion?1993, Harvard Business School Bulletin - Volume 69, page 40
To jump over or into puddles.
- God wades through the oceans (Job 38:16) like a schoolboy might puddle-jump in his rubber boots while the stars sing at the sunrise of a new day (Job 38:7).2016, David J. Lynden, Fluid with God, →ISBN
To take a short trip by boat
- Since we normally puddle-jump close inshore, what is needed is one that puts out a nice narrow pencil of ultrasonic energy ahead.1952, Electronics - Volume 25, page 97
- That you can handle a small runabout is no indication you can skipper a twin-screw yacht; that you can puddle-jump on bay is no indication you can run an inlet.1966, MotorBoating - Sep 1966, page 16
To move a small distance; to go from one small thing to another.
- Without a clear set of objectives and a plan for achieving them, you can only puddle-jump from one task to another, leaving lots of things half finished.1993, Pat Roessle Materka, Time in, time out, time enough: a time management guide for women

Noun
plural	puddle-jumps
Verb
third-person singular present	puddle-jumps
present participle	puddle-jumping
past participle	puddle-jumped
past	puddle-jumped

What does puddle-jump mean?: Puddle-jump means a short airplane flight.
What part of speech is puddle-jump?: Puddle-jump can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of puddle-jump?: The plural of puddle-jump is puddle-jumps.

Adapted from Wiktionary: puddle-jump (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: 2026-09-02

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