Word Confusion: Gibe vs Jibe vs Jive . . . and a Gybe

Plural for the noun: gibes
Gerund: gibing

Third person present verb: gibes
Past tense or past participle: gibed
Present participle: gibing

Alternate spelling: gybe, jibe

Plural for the noun: gybes
Gerund: gybing

Third person present verb: gybes
Past tense or past participle: gybed
Present participle: gybing

Alternate spelling: gibe, jibe

Plural for the noun: jibes
Gerund: jibing

Third person present verb: jibes
Past tense or past participle: jibed
Present participle: jibing

Alternate spelling: gibe, gybe, jib, jibb

Plural for the noun: jives
Gerund: jiving

Third person present verb: jives
Past tense or past participle: jived
Present participle: jiving

[Or jibe] An insulting or mocking remark

• A taunt

A pointy comment, an insult, a verbal thump on the forehead

Verb, intransitive:
[Or jibe] Make insulting or mocking remarks

• Jeer

Verb, transitive:
Taunt

• Deride

Verb, intransitive:
[Sailing; of a fore-and-aft sail] To shift suddenly from one side of the vessel to the other when running before the wind, as the result of allowing the wind to catch the leech

To cause a sailing vessel to gybe

[Sailing; of a sailing vessel] To undergo gybing

Verb, transitive:
[Sailing] Swing a sail or boom across a following wind

[Or gibe] An insulting or mocking remark ²

• A taunt

Verb, intransitive:
[Sailing] Change course by swinging a fore-and-aft sail or its boom across a following wind ¹

• [Of a sail or boom] Swing or be swung across a following wind
• Alter course so that a fore-and-aft sail shifts in this manner

[Or gibe] Make insulting or mocking remarks ²

• Jeer
• A taunting or sarcastic remark

[North American; informal] Be in harmony or accord ³

• Agree

Verb, transitive:
[Sailing] Swing a sail or boom across a following wind ¹

Taunt

• Deride

Noun:
A lively style of dance popular especially in the 1940s and 1950s, performed to swing music or rock and roll

• Swing music
• A style of dance music popular in South Africa

[Also jive talk] A form of slang associated with black American jazz musicians

• [North American; informal] A thing, especially talk, that is deceptive, exaggerated, or worthless

Verb, intransitive:
Perform the jive or a similar dance to popular music

• To dance, to jive
• Jitterbug

Talk nonsense

Verb, transitive:
[Slang] To tease

• Fool
• Kid

“The last sentence was spoken in taunting tones, and Slade’s face showed that the gibe had gone home” (Landon).

But that gibe is now out-of-date.

“Dr. Prince walked off very triumphantly after this parting gibe” (Delafield).

Verb, intransitive:
Some cynics in the media might gibe.

The maids looked at one another and laughed, while pretty Melantho began to gibe at him contemptuously.

She set Eurymachus son of Polybus on to gibe at him, which made the others laugh.

If, again, war were to break out this day, give me a shield, a couple of spears, and a helmet fitting well upon my temples — you would find me foremost in the fray, and would cease your gibes about my belly.

It’s impolite to gibe at a foreign student’s English.

It’s easy enough for you to gibe at them, but could you do any better?

That hurt, too, just like his gibe about the professor.

Verb, transitive:
“Walter, how are you going to get those robots to pay your union dues,” gibed the boss of Ford Motor Company.

Can you gibe me a better deal?

Verb, intransitive:
“The Phantom had to come about, and get on the right tack, for Guilford was too careful to gybe in that wind” (Optic).

He “was the most amazed when he saw me work the boat to and again in the sea by the rudder, and how the sail gybed, and filled this way or that way as the course we sailed changed.” – Daniel Defoe

“The cutter had lost all four foremost men by the violent gybing of a boom.”

Charmed Life is equipped with a refrigerator, a freezer, and a microwave, so the women can zap their meals between gybing, tacking, and swabbing decks.

We are currently on a port gybe and will probably have to gybe twice more before we can get lined up for the final dash to the finish.

Many an hour was spent tacking, gybing, and splicing the main brace with the occasional capsize as well.

On the second day, we practiced gybing, or passing the boat’s backside through the wind.

They gybed, and the boat turned over.

Verb, transitive:
“This maneuver was bound to force her to gybe her mainsail from one side to the other.” – Jack London

For starters it doesn’t fly from a spinnaker pole, which makes setting and gybing the sail simple.

Due to the fact that you are gybing the sail this way you will need to pull hard and fast on the new leeward sheet to trim the sail in on the new tack and course.

When the breeze picked up to 35 kts we dropped the spinnaker, gybed, set the headsail, and started heading back inshore to catch the cold front moving in from the southwest.

Careful control of the boom and mainsail is required when gybing in order to prevent a violent motion of the boom when it switches sides.

His replies were peppered with small jibes.

But a caring family couldn’t totally protect the young Alíesha from the jibes and taunts of schoolmates and soldiers.

That was until the jibes become too much for me.

It was a cheap jibe about his loss of hair.

It was a jibe at his old rivals.

Some cynics in the media might jibe.

Verb, intransitive:
They jibed, and the boat turned over.

We were lying head to north-west, and it was his intention to jibe over all with the first puff.

Be vigilant about an accidental jibe.

The boom is given to a violent move when we jibe.

It is all very well for Tariq Ali to jibe at India’s neo-liberal economics, but this, alas, is the only show in town.

Today one can easily jibe at the show’s glaring seams and stitches.

The verdict does not jibe with the medical evidence.

The report does not quite jibe with the commissioner’s observations.

Verb, transitive:
When running in a sloop, one may jibe only the mainsail to the opposite side of the boat.

With a bit of practice, you can steer, turn, tack, and jibe a boat with just her sails. (Jamieson)

We all still have Zoidberg, but we all are jive turkeys.

That boy be talkin’ jive nonsense.

Noun:
She employs around 20 teachers, teaching ballet, tap, foxtrot, waltz, tango, jive, and hip hop.

Gloria and her husband still enjoy a bit of a bop and a jive.

Miller’s distinctive big band timbre is the sound of a generation: swing and jive, romance and sweet sentiment, people and places.

But what he found when he went to Johannesburg convinced him that an entire album could be built around township jive.

He shops for disco clothes and plaid pants, gets an Afro wig, and starts talking jive.

It’s a nice portrait of Strummer the hipster, talking his jive talk and dropping the needle on U Roy records to a worldwide audience.

Scott Hudson was freaking hilarious talking in carny jive when interviewing them.

There are beautiful teens with bored expressions, belied by their enthusiastic jive.

Don’t give me any of that jive!

A single image says more than any amount of blather and jive.

Unfortunately, the good former Senator was talking jive.

Oh man, these people are all around us making joke after joke, jive after jive, pun after pun, all in a vain attempt to elicit laughter.

Verb, intransitive:
People were jiving in the aisles.

Everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves, dancing and jiving about.

They had a CD of Christmassy tunes set to standard dance rhythms, and jiving to Slade was most enjoyable!

He wasn’t jiving about that bartender.

The very nature of God-given expression makes room for people to hum, pluck, and jive while having concerns over society’s woes.

Her facial expressions did not jive with what she was saying.

Verb, transitive:
Willy kept jiving him until Jimmy left.

Stop jiving me!

I turned the corner and, I jive you not, the first person I saw was Lamps.

Soon after, gibe was used as a noun referring to the remark.

1. 1685–95, a variant of gybe, from the obsolete Dutch gijben.
2. Mid-16th century (as a verb); perhaps from the Old French giber meaning handle roughly (in modern dialect kick).
3. 1805–15 as an Americanism; origin uncertain.

1940s, the later musical sense jazz gave rise to dance performed to jazz