Jungle
Origin
Hindi jaṅgal & Urdu jangal forest, from Sanskrit jaṅgala desert region
Definitions
- 1a : an impenetrable thicket or tangled mass of tropical vegetation
- b : a tract overgrown with thickets or masses of vegetation
- 2: a hobo camp
- 3a (1) : a confused or disordered mass of objects : jumble (2) : something that baffles or frustrates by its tangled or complex character : maze <the jungle of housing laws — Bernard Taper>
- b : a place of ruthless struggle for survival <the city is a jungle where no one is safe after dark — Stuart Chase>
- 4: electronic dance music that combines elements of techno, reggae, and hip-hop and is marked especially by an extremely fast beat
Description
Jungle (Sanskrit: जंगल) refers to the most dense, more or less impenetrable regions within a tropical rainforest with an abundance of animal and plant life. The word jungle originates from the Sanskrit word jangala (जंगल) which referred to uncultivated land. Although the Sanskrit word refers to "dry land", it has been suggested that an Anglo-Indian interpretation led to its connotation as a dense "tangled thicket" while others have argued that a cognate word in Urdu did refer to forests. The term is prevalent in many languages of the Indian subcontinent, and Iranian plateau, particularly in Hindi and Persian.
The term jungle may still be used in technical contexts to describe the rainforest biome, a forest characterised by extensive biodiversity and densely tangled undergrowth including the young trees, vines and lianas, and herbaceous plants.
As a metaphor, jungle often refers to situations that are unruly or lawless, or where the only law is perceived to be "survival of the fittest". This reflects the view of "city people" that forests are such places. Upton Sinclair gave the title The Jungle (1906) to his famous book about the life of workers at the Chicago Stockyards portraying the workers as being mercilessly exploited with no legal or other lawful recourse.
The term "The Law of the Jungle" is also used in a similar context, drawn from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (1894) - though in the society of jungle animals portrayed in that book and obviously meant as a metaphor for human society, that phrase referred to an intricate code of laws which Kipling describes in detail, and not at all to a lawless chaos.
