View Full Version : why 'jumbo' jet ?
anyone know the origins of jumbo (as in jet)
or anything else for that matter?
Obadiah
19th Nov 2001, 19:55
You gotta be kidding...
Jumbo...as in big...like an elephant!
Ok?
timmcat
19th Nov 2001, 20:30
Obidiah, think you are missing the point.. dictionary definition throws this up:
jum·bo (jmb)
n. pl. jum·bos
An unusually large person, animal, or thing.
adj.
Unusually large: jumbo shrimp; a jumbo jet.
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[After Jumbo, a large elephant exhibited by P.T. Barnum, probably from slang, clumsy person.]
Unwell_Raptor
19th Nov 2001, 20:52
Yup, Jumbo wa a real elephant, whose name came to mean all elephants.
Add the sub-editor's love of alliterative headlines, and there you go.
'Twin-aisle four engined widebody' doesn't quite have that crispness, does it?
TwinAisle
20th Nov 2001, 15:49
Just to add to this - it may be interesting to some....
Jumbo (from the African phrase "mumbo jumbo") was bought as a baby elephant by PT Barnum, who exhibited him for years in the US as part of the circus. Jumbo grew to an enormous size, even by elephant standards, and the name Jumbo came to refer to anything that was exceptionally big.
As a sad footnote, Jumbo was killed by a train, when he became transfixed by the lights of an approaching express - with the empirically necessary effect on both train and elephant. PT Barnum then split up the carcass, and exhibited the skeleton and the sking seperately. He made more money from Jumbo dead than alive...