Word.ws English Dictionary

rumspringa

rumspringa noun: a period of adolescence for some members of the Amish that begins around the age of 14–16 and ends when a youth chooses baptism within the Amish church or instead leaves the community.

Noun

rumspringa (countable and uncountable, plural rumspringas)

  1. (US) A period of adolescence for some members of the Amish that begins around the age of 14–16 and ends when a youth chooses baptism within the Amish church or instead leaves the community.
    • At stake for the Amish community in the rumspringa process is nothing less than the survival of their sect and way of life. For if the unbaptized children who venture into the world at sixteen do not later return to the fold in sufficient numbers, the sect will dwindle and die out.2007, Tom Shachtman, Rumspringa: To Be or Not to Be Amish, North Point Press, →ISBN

Forms of rumspringa

pluralrumspringas

Origin of rumspringa

Borrowed from Pennsylvania German rumspringe (“to jump around”). Compare German rumspringen.

Questions about rumspringa

What does rumspringa mean?
Rumspringa means a period of adolescence for some members of the Amish that begins around the age of 14–16 and ends when a youth chooses baptism within the Amish church or instead leaves the community.
What part of speech is rumspringa?
Rumspringa is a noun.
What is the plural of rumspringa?
The plural of rumspringa is rumspringas.

Words near rumspringa in the dictionary

  1. Rumsfeldian
  2. rumshop
  3. rumshops
  4. Rumsien
  5. Rumson
  6. rumspringa
  7. rumspringas
  8. rumswizzle
  9. rumswizzles
  10. rumtini
  11. rumtinis

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rumspringa (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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