Jaywalking

noun, verb

noun, verb ·3 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An act of behaving as a jaywalker. uncountable

    "[…] when he had felt unhappy over a movie theater large enough to contain ten times the population of Schoenstrom, and been cursed by a policeman for jaywalking, and had passed a hotel entirely full of diplomats and marble and caviare[…"

Verb
  1. 1
    present participle and gerund of jaywalk form-of, gerund, participle, present

Synonyms

All synonyms
ambulateanklecircumambulatefootfoot ithoof

Example

More examples

"Is there a law here about jaywalking?"

Etymology

Etymology 1

Back-formation from jaywalker. Analyzable as jaywalk + -ing, or jay (“a stupid person”) + walking.

Etymology 2

From jaywalk + -ing.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.