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

Posted March 28, 2019 by kddidit in Author Resources, Self-Editing, Word Confusions, Writing

Revised as of
22 Nov 2022

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I thought this would be an easy Word Confusion to write up. I should’ve taken Murphy’s law into account, as “Gibe vs Jibe vs Jive . . . and a Gybe” is one of the more complex ones — it started with jibe and jive but the more I researched, more complexities surfaced.

Part of that complexity is that gybe is the British spelling of gibe/jibe, AND gybe only refers to the nautical definition. Talk about specific!

The more complex issue is the differences between gibe and jibe with some dictionaries claiming that the two words are essentially the same. However, more dictionaries specify that gibe is more about the taunt . . . and only the taunt.

Jibe is primarily sailing and agreement. Except there’s that alternative spelling issue. Your best bet? Use gibe to taunt and jibe to sail or agree.

As for jive, it’s all about the jazz — music, dancing, or slang by jazz musicians. When it comes to taunt, it’s more a case of nonsense talk than putting someone down. Again a few dictionaries state that jive is also about taunting, but more claim it’s about the teasing. As for including agree as part of the jive definition, it’s a common confusion. And wrong.

Taunt: A remark made in order to anger, wound, or provoke someone.

Tease: Make fun of or attempt to provoke a person or animal in a playful way.

Word Confusions . . .

. . . started as my way of dealing with a professional frustration with properly spelled words that were out of context in manuscripts I was editing as well as books I was reviewing. It evolved into a sharing of information with y’all. I’m hoping you’ll share with us words that have been a bête noire for you from either end.

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Gibe	Gybe	Jibe	Jive
Young Bucks Taunt by Anton Jackson is under the CC BY-SA 2.0 license, via VisualHunt. — It’s one gibe after another from this pair.	Towards the Gybe Mark by Adam McElroy is under the CC BY-NC 2.0, via VisualHunt.	JIBE courtesy of JOG yacht racing is under the CC BY-NC 2.0 license, via VisualHunt. — The boat is jibing, and it seems that the crew has jibed about where to sit.	Jive by Jan Kaláb is under the CC BY-SA 2.0 license, via Flickr.
Part of Grammar:
Noun; Verb, intransitive & transitive 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	British Noun; Verb, intransitive & transitive 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	Noun ¹, ²; Verb ¹, intransitive ³ & transitive 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	Adjective; Noun; Verb, intransitive & transitive Plural for the noun: jives Gerund: jiving Third person present verb: jives Past tense or past participle: jived Present participle: jiving
The taunt Noun: An act or instance of gibing [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	Nautical only Noun: An instance of gybing 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	Nautical or agreement The taunt can be spelled gibe, but it’s not an acceptable spelling. Noun: An act or instance of jibing ¹ [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	Deceptive, deceitful AND a type of dance as well as slang among musicians. While a taunt like gibe, it’s more of a tease Adjective: [North American; informal] Deceitful or worthless 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
Examples:
Noun: It was a gibe at his old rivals. “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?	Noun: “So they ran before it largely till the bows were pressed right under, and it was no human poser that saved the gybe” (Belloc). 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.	Noun: On the way some had salutations for her and some had gibes. 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)	Adjective: But it’s still a big jive turkey in need of a valuable lesson. 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.
Derivatives:
Adverb: gibingly Noun: giber		Adjective: jibing Adverb: jibingly Noun: jiber Verb: jibing	Adjective: jivey, jivier, jiviest, jivy Noun: jiver
History of the Word:
Mid-16th century (as a verb), meaning to make a remark that is taunting or sarcastic, perhaps from the Old French giber meaning handle roughly (in modern dialect kick). Soon after, gibe was used as a noun referring to the remark.	Late 17th century, from the obsolete Dutch gijben (now gijpen), is of obscure origin, and only applied to the nautical definition of gibe or jibe.	1685–95, a variant of gybe, from the obsolete Dutch gijben. Mid-16th century (as a verb); perhaps from the Old French giber meaning handle roughly (in modern dialect kick). 1805–15 as an Americanism; origin uncertain.	1920s and originally American denoting meaningless or misleading speech. It is of unknown origin. 1940s, the later musical sense jazz gave rise to dance performed to jazz

Gibe

Gybe

Jibe

Jive

Two guys in ripped jeans and fringed T-shirts taunt the crowd from inside a boxing ring

Young Bucks Taunt by Anton Jackson is under the CC BY-SA 2.0 license, via VisualHunt.

—

It’s one gibe after another from this pair.

Two Laser dinghys with colorful sails pass each other

Towards the Gybe Mark by Adam McElroy is under the CC BY-NC 2.0, via VisualHunt.

A sailboat heeling over as it goes around a yellow buoy.

JIBE courtesy of JOG yacht racing is under the CC BY-NC 2.0 license, via VisualHunt.

—

The boat is jibing, and it seems that the crew has jibed about where to sit.

Four couples on an uncrowded dance floor jiving away.

Jive by Jan Kaláb is under the CC BY-SA 2.0 license, via Flickr.

Part of Grammar:

Noun;
Verb, intransitive & transitive

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

British

Noun;
Verb, intransitive & transitive

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

Noun ¹, ²;
Verb ¹, intransitive ³ & transitive

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

Adjective; Noun;
Verb, intransitive & transitive

Plural for the noun: jives
Gerund: jiving

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

The taunt

Noun:
An act or instance of gibing

[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

Nautical only

Noun:
An instance of gybing

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

Nautical or agreement

The taunt can be spelled gibe, but it’s not an acceptable spelling.

Noun:
An act or instance of jibing ¹

[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

Deceptive, deceitful AND a type of dance as well as slang among musicians.
While a taunt like gibe, it’s more of a tease

Adjective:
[North American; informal] Deceitful or worthless

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

Examples:

Noun:
It was a gibe at his old rivals.

“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?

Noun:
“So they ran before it largely till the bows were pressed right under, and it was no human poser that saved the gybe” (Belloc).

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.

Noun:
On the way some had salutations for her and some had gibes.

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)

Adjective:
But it’s still a big jive turkey in need of a valuable lesson.

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.

Derivatives:

Adverb: gibingly
Noun: giber

Adjective: jibing
Adverb: jibingly
Noun: jiber
Verb: jibing

Adjective: jivey, jivier, jiviest, jivy
Noun: jiver

History of the Word:

Mid-16th century (as a verb), meaning to make a remark that is taunting or sarcastic, perhaps from the Old French giber meaning handle roughly (in modern dialect kick).

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

Late 17th century, from the obsolete Dutch gijben (now gijpen), is of obscure origin, and only applied to the nautical definition of gibe or jibe.

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

1920s and originally American denoting meaningless or misleading speech. It is of unknown origin.

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

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C’mon, get it out of your system, bitch, whine, moan . . . which words are your pet peeves? Also, please note that I try to be as accurate as I can, but mistakes happen or I miss something. Email me if you find errors, so I can fix them . . . and we’ll all benefit!

Satisfy your curiosity about other Word Confusions on its homepage or more generally explore the index of self-editing posts. You may also want to explore Book Layout & Formatting Ideas, Formatting Tips, Grammar Explanations, Linguistics, Publishing Tips, the Properly Punctuated, Writing Ideas and Resources, and Working Your Website.

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Resources for Gibe vs Jibe vs Jive . . . and a Gybe

Some of these links may be affiliate links, and I will earn a small percentage, if you should buy it. It does not affect the price you pay.

Apple Dictionary.com

Belloc, Hilaire. Hills and the Sea. Ebook. <https://amzn.to/3QJJ0vt>.

Delafield, E.M. Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Delafield US (Illustrated) <https://amzn.to/3gwS4Yf>.

Dictionary.com: gybe, jibe and jive

The Free Dictionary: gibe

Jamieson, John. “Something About Me and My Book.” The Book Marketing Network. n.d. Web. n.d. <http://thebookmarketingnetwork.com/profile/JohnJamieson>.

Landon, Herman. The Gray Phantom. Project Gutenberg, 2011. Originally published 1921. <https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37913>. Ebook.

Merriam-Webster: gybe

Optic, Oliver. The Yacht Club. 2012. Ebook. <https://amzn.to/3S8ceFn>.

Oxford Dictionaries: jive

Vocabulary.com: gibe-jibe, jibe

Vocabulary Words: gibe <https://vocabulary-words.com/gibe/>

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Pinterest Photo Credits:

Astaire-Hayworth Dancing by Columbia Pictures and Comante Taunt, a trailer from Scarface, are both in the public domain, via Wikimedia.com. Image from page 70 of Our Young Folks, <https://visualhunt.com/f2/photo/14579527058/28afd71f1d/>, a serial from 1865, is courtesy of Internet Archive Book Images and has no known copyright restrictions, via VisualHunt.

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