- a dance for couples, esp. in the late 1930s and early 1940s, involving fast, acrobatic movements to swing music
- Informal a dancer of the jitterbug
Origin of jitterbug
jitter + bugintransitive verb
-·bugged·, -·bug·ging to dance the jitterbug
jitterbug
Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fifth Edition Copyright © 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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"jitterbug." YourDictionary, n.d. Web. 21 January 2019. <https://www.yourdictionary.com/Jitterbug>.
APA Style
jitterbug. (n.d.). Retrieved January 21st, 2019, from https://www.yourdictionary.com/Jitterbug
jitterbug
noun
- A strenuous dance performed to quick-tempo swing or jazz music and consisting of various two-step patterns embellished with twirls and sometimes acrobatic maneuvers.
- One who performs this dance.
intransitive verb
jit·ter·bugged, jit·ter·bug·ging, jit·ter·bugsTo perform this dance.
Origin of jitterbug
From jitterbug heavy drinker who suffers from the jitters from jitterTHE AMERICAN HERITAGE® DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, FIFTH EDITION by the Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries. Copyright © 2016, 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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Cite this page
MLA Style
"jitterbug." YourDictionary, n.d. Web. 21 January 2019. <https://www.yourdictionary.com/Jitterbug>.
APA Style
jitterbug. (n.d.). Retrieved January 21st, 2019, from https://www.yourdictionary.com/Jitterbug
Noun
(plural jitterbugs)
- A nervous or jittery person.
- A jazz musician or aficionado.
- An uptempo jazz or swing dance which embellishes on the two-step pattern and frequently incorporates acrobatic style swing steps.
Verb
(third-person singular simple present jitterbugs, present participle jitterbugging, simple past and past participle jitterbugged)
- To dance the jitterbug.
English Wiktionary. Available under CC-BY-SA license.
Link to this page
Cite this page
MLA Style
"jitterbug." YourDictionary, n.d. Web. 21 January 2019. <https://www.yourdictionary.com/Jitterbug>.
APA Style
jitterbug. (n.d.). Retrieved January 21st, 2019, from https://www.yourdictionary.com/Jitterbug
Sentence Examples
- The Jitterbug: Part one of a three part series in instructional videos teaching the Jitterbug, this video is a good one for beginning dancers because even the dance frame is explained at the beginning.
- Rockabilly, which combined rock 'n' roll and hillbilly a la Elvis, was an intense, rhythm-driven music that made for very busy dancing, like the Jitterbug of the 1940s and the Charleston in the 1920s.
- Not surprisingly, you will not find any information easily available on the Jitterbug website - though you can easily find out how to tell them how much you love their phones.
- About 160,000 Jitterbug units were recalled in mid-2009 because they ran the risk of not successfully connecting to 911 in an emergency if they were in a no-service area.
- Even the name, "Jitterbug," is designed to evoke a response to the classic dance, and the website talks about how the phone is aimed at baby boomers and their parents.
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