Word.ws English Dictionary

puddle jump

puddle jump noun: a short airplane flight (in a puddle jumper).

Noun

puddle jump (plural puddle jumps)

  1. A short airplane flight (in a puddle jumper).
    • Just a white-knuckled puddle jump away lies the stunningly beautiful. relatively unvisited islands of Samoa.2009, Andrew Zimmern, The Bizarre Truth, →ISBN, page 15
    • First, came an uneventful puddle jump to the chaos of LA International, where, surrounded by thousands, I looked out on the tarmac at the massive aluminum monster that was to be my flight to New York.2012, DH Koester, And There I Was, →ISBN
  2. A jump over or into a puddle.
    • Karen Cornell Wilson Kenya's big red boots were ... great for puddle jumps.1975, Mary Baker Eddy, Christian Science Sentinel - Volume 77, page 2000
    • Hold the lead in your right hand so the slack is draped against your left thigh, then take a puddle jump with your left leg.1993, Pure-bred Dogs, American Kennel Gazette - Volume 110, page 80
  3. A short trip by boat, especially one that remains close to shore.
    • The first time I saw cloudberries on a portage was early on, after several hard short portages and puddle jumps.1987, Common Lives, Lesbian Lives - Issues 21-24, page 114
    • The trips aren't long; in fact, the south ferry is barely more than a puddle jump.1989, Arthur Frommer, George McDonald, New York State, 1990-91, →ISBN, page 191
  4. A small difference.
    • Shepard concluded: ". . . he puts it over as show business, tinkling the piano, puckering and mugging as he goes and making the generation gap seem little more than a puddle jump.1969, The Many Worlds of Music

Verb

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

  1. To take a short flight (on a puddle jumper).
    • I was concerned that you couldn't get into La Paz at 13,000 feet, and had to go over into Lima and puddle jump out of Lima into La Paz.1963, United States. Congress. House. Appropriations, Department of Defense Appropriations for 1964
    • "Why puddle jump between home and New York?2006, Ira Eisenstadt, The Wedding Song, →ISBN, page 178
  2. To jump over or into puddles.
    • Not wanting to puddle jump across the parking lot if I didn't have to, I reached for my cell phone and called the club, only to get a busy signal.2002, Big City Blues - Volume 8, Issues 1-2, page 28
    • Ange parked fifty yards away and sent the three younger men to puddle-jump and investigate.2007, Paul Johnson, City of Kings: The Ongoing Adventures of Casey Jones, →ISBN, page 59
  3. To take a short trip by boat, especially one that remains lose to shore
    • There are some dandy short cuts up there, if you don't mind puddle jumping. If you figure tide and current right, sometimes you can jump a puddle in a couple of good jumps, with the breakers boosting you.1939, Thomas Fleming Day, The Rudder - Volume 55, page 29
  4. To move a small distance; to go from one small thing to another.
    • States will no longer be able to "puddle jump" among aid categories in order to take advantage of the more general federal matching formulas in some programs.1975, The American Legislator - Volume 1, page 116

Examples of puddle jump in a sentence

  • Chance wasn't sure if she was genuinely concerned about Rashawn, trying to avoid conversation about Junior, or truly just nervous about the puddle jump from SFO to PDX.2012, Michelle McGriff, Blood Relations, →ISBN:
  • The off-ramp handbrake spin-'n'-sprint, the salt-truck joust, the 10-meter pothole puddle jump — all were good ideas rejected because of logistical problems or the likelihood that we would be sued.2003, Car and Driver - Volume 48, page 111:
  • We then "puddle jumped" to the Drake Bay airstrip, on the northern Pacific side of the peninsula.2012, Wisconsin Natural Resources - Volumes 36-37, page 12:
  • You can puddle jump your way through your walk in the rain.2013, Grace Price, PreK-1 Daily Fitness Activities, →ISBN:

Forms of puddle jump

Noun
pluralpuddle jumps
alternative formpuddle-jump
Verb
third-person singular presentpuddle jumps
present participlepuddle jumping
past participlepuddle jumped
pastpuddle jumped

Questions about puddle jump

What does puddle jump mean?
Puddle jump means a short airplane flight (in a puddle jumper).
How do you use puddle jump in a sentence?
Chance wasn't sure if she was genuinely concerned about Rashawn, trying to avoid conversation about Junior, or truly just nervous about the puddle jump from SFO to PDX.
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.

Words near puddle jump in the dictionary

  1. puddle balls
  2. puddle bar
  3. puddle bars
  4. puddle hopper
  5. puddle hoppers
  6. puddle jump
  7. puddle jumped
  8. puddle jumper
  9. puddle jumpers
  10. puddle jumping
  11. puddle jumps

Source and license

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.

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