Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A person or thing that is believed to bring bad luck.
- n. A condition or period of bad luck that appears to have been caused by a specific person or thing.
- v. To bring bad luck to.
Wiktionary
- n. A hex; an evil spell.
- n. A person or thing supposed to bring bad luck.
- v. transitive To cast a spell on.
- v. transitive To bring bad luck to.
- interj. Used after the same response is said by two people simultaneously. Often, a game is played where the person who failed to say "jinx" first becomes "jinxed", whereby they cannot speak until someone says their name.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Slang A person, object, influence, or supernatural being which is supposed to bring bad luck or to cause things to go wrong.
- v. Slang To bring bad luck to; to cause to malfunction or go wrong.
WordNet 3.0
- n. an evil spell
- v. foredoom to failure
- n. a person believed to bring bad luck to those around him
- v. cast a spell over someone or something; put a hex on someone or something
Etymologies
- Possibly from jynx, wryneck (from its use in witchcraft), from Latin iynx, from Greek iunx, perhaps from iuzein, to call, cry. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The year 2009 also saw Arvind Bhat break the title jinx at the National championship after four abortive finals, when he beat P Kashyap in the summit clash in Indore.”
“Zedillo wanted at all costs to avoid the sixth-year, end-of-term jinx that has befallen every Mexican president since Luis Echeverria in 1976.”
“Hey listen, this is just the second-term jinx that always happens once you're a president.”
“KING: But if Republicans defy the traditional midterm jinx, the reasons extend beyond the President's aggressive campaigning.”
“Don't forget that thing you call a jinx, which you say has been camping on our trail for so long.”
“Defying the second-term jinx, he vastly simplified the federal tax code, discharging millions of low-income Americans from taxpaying obligations altogether.”
“It became known as a jinx: if Bale was in the side, the stats suggested, Spurs wouldn't win.”
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph
“Puyallup ends SPSL title jinx with win over Kentwood”
“Host Bengal will be hoping to exploit the home advantage to break its prolonged title jinx in the senior National football championship for the Santosh Trophy.”
“A superb exhibition of seam bowling led by left-arm pacer Ashish Nehra helped India end a 15-year title jinx at Asia Cup.”
WN.com - Articles related to Dinesh Karthik fighting fifty takes India to 268/6 in Asia Cup final
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘jinx’.
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bbc uk china vocab.
conservationists, estimate, threats, infertility, eating away at, endangered, furry, panel, in trouble, gongs, triumphed, caps and 1007 more...
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henryar's list
marmoleum, menagerie, cyan, ochre, pilfer, discombobulate, loquacious, iridescent, amethyst, derelict, botulism, equilibrium and 240 more...
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pretty dots all in a row
polka dotted words
hijack, jinx, jingle, beijing, jive, jilted, jittery, jill, hijab, haji, hajj, hijinks and 149 more...
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Surprising four-letter words
I imagine most of these will be Anglo-Saxon, not likely to crop up in the average day's conversation, and thus excellent for Scrabble. ("most" is too common, likewise "will" and even "crop", in an...
blet, quim, clit, buff, sire, wiki, blog, loam, waft, heft, mare, lilt and 68 more...
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Scrabble words which start with the l...
juvenile, juvenal, jutty, jute, jut, justness, justly, justle, justify, justice, juster, just and 534 more...
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What's That Pokémon Name?
Words used to create the names of Pokémon, which are usually portmanteaux.
bulb, dinosaur, ivy, venus, char, salamander, squirt, turtle, blast, tortoise, water, caterpillar and 525 more...
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X Marks the Spot
Words ending in "x" (except proper nouns and trademarks)
ax, ex, ox, soapbox, smallpox, six, sex, sax, rex, pressbox, climax, chickenpox and 208 more...
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Great Character Names
kilgore trout, waring hudsucker, sidney j. mussburger, naopoleon dynamite, martin chuzzlewit, egon spengler, herman menderchuck, merkin muffley, hiro protagonist, anastasia beaverh..., h.e. pennypacker, tricky dixon and 177 more...
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Morthalion's Words
supercilious, kvetch, kvass, splurge, erroneous, pugnacious, macabre, gauche, conglomerate, abyss, paraphernalia, kleptomania and 285 more...
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eggplantia5's Words
scintillate, marvel, cranberry, oscillate, triumph, bamboozle, grimace, magical, book, hexagon, cipher, compendium and 2727 more...
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kat's words
ecumenical, cacophony, clatter, marimba, bamboo, saffron, slice, mercurial, pomegranate, cranky, slipshod, scritch and 511 more...
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harry potter words
quidditch, apparate, disapparate, lumos, snitch, pensieve, dementor, azkaban, wingardium, leviosa, horcrux, bludger and 376 more...
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Worthy Wordie
words learnt from the Internet
unthink, meme, logophile, netiquette, onomatopoeia, singularity, oed, johnson's dictionary, man friday, lewis carroll, ontology, pro bono and 143 more...
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whatever1013's Words
chocolate, sesquipedalophobia, discombobulated, callipygian, retronym, squirm, cobalt blue, plethora, onomatopoeia, blowhard, strumpet, shush and 173 more...
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Life is just a four-letter word
Everyone's got their favorites. Here are some of mine.
snit, hobo, minx, kiln, loll, pelf, yegg, ugly, bumf, brio, biro, haha and 92 more...
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Magicial Verbs
enchant, curse, hex, jinx, cast, chant, summon, charm, bewitch
Tweets
Looking for tweets for jinx.
oroboros Joe Btfsplk! Aug 24, 2009