bungee
/ˈbʌndʒi
/noun
(also bungee cord or bungee rope) A long nylon-cased rubber band used for securing luggage and in the sport of bungee jumping.I'd not been warned about the bungee cord dangling from the luggage rack, which swiftly entangled itself in the gears, getting me as greasy-fingered fixing it as I would have been refitting the chain on my old rattler....
- They reached the truck and Blair climbed in, stuffing his bag on the floor while Jim set the case in the back and secured it with a bungee cord.
- A good exercise for beginners to simulate the pole vault is to, while on the trampoline, land on your back, shoot up into the air feet first and try and clear a bungee rope being held in the air next to you.
verb [no object]
Perform a bungee jump: he bungeed 111 metres from the bridge over the Victoria Falls...
- Despite my fear, I have jumped out of planes, bungeed over gambling towns, scaled buildings without ropes, and abseiled from the odd mountain here and there.
- But, try to get him to base jump after you're done bungeeing, well, then you're just being a bitch.
- That sound you heard was Mike ‘That Toddlin' Town’ Wilbon bungeeing off the Sears Tower.
Origin
1930s (denoting an elasticated cord for launching a glider): of unknown origin.
A bungee was originally a rubber or eraser, although why has yet to be discovered. In the 1930s the word came to mean an elasticated cord for launching a glider, and by the 1960s the bungee or bungee cord, with a hook at each end, was used for securing articles. By the late 1970s a similar band allowed the development of bungee jumping, the sport of jumping from a high place secured by a band round the ankles.