Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) a tramp; also attrib.

1967

(con. 1920s) J. Thompson South of Heaven (1994) 13: Tell your junglebird buddies I’ll be just waitin’ for ’em.

(US tramp) a parasite on other tramps; a tramp who robs his fellows.

1914		‘A-No. 1’ Adventures of a Female Tramp 61: This ‘jungle buzzard’ returned from his errand with handouts filling the greasy lining of his coat.
1917		Day Book (Chicago) 8 Jan. 24/1: Let him go into the highways and byways and see life, and not glom it second-hand like a ‘jungle buzzard’ does a hobo’s leavings.
1923		N. Anderson Hobo 20: Jungle crimes include [...] ‘buzzing,’ or making the jungle a permanent hangout for jungle ‘buzzards’ who subsist on the leavings of meals.
1927		Nichols & Tully Twenty Below Act II: Jungle buzzards! You can’t even get arrested!
1933		‘Goat’ Laven Rough Stuff 30: I got the dope on what trains were pulling out from one of the ‘jungle-buzzers’.
1935		A.J. Pollock Und. Speaks n.p.: Jungle bum, a dyed in the wool tramp who never works.
1938		El Paso Times (TX) 28 July n.p.: I have been every kind of bum [...] a sympathy bum and mug hustler. A mission stiff and a bindle stiff. A jungle buzzard and a booster.
1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 33: The drapes they handed me a jungle bum would wear on weekdays.
1948		J.M. Cain Moth (1950) 161: I bawled him out for the filthy jungle buzzard that he was.
1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 112/2: Jungle buzzard. A hobo, especially a thieving hobo who prefers to remain around the jungle either because he is in fear of police, or because he finds it easier to chisel from other jungle residents and transients.
1962		Ragen & Finston World’s Toughest Prison 806: Jungle buzzard – A tramp or yegg who preys on others of his kind.
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 69: To act the part of a jungle buzzard is to beg from hoboes or to scavenge whatever food they have left in their jungles, or camps.
1991		O.D. Brooks Legs 2: I’m not a brainy guy. I’m just road smart. I’ve been traveling enough to be able to tell the pisspot from the handle, and I know a jungle buzzard when I see one.
2003		C. Williams One More Train to Ride 133: I helped get the wood, the water, and all that to bring to the jungle, because I didn’t want to be a jungle buzzard.

(US tramp) a form of unofficial court held amongst vagrants.

1915

Morn. Tulsa Dly World (OK) 13 June 19/2: jungle court — A make believe court held in woods by hobos.

a frequenter of tramp encampments.

1930

G. Milburn ‘The Timber-Beast’s Lament’ in Hobo’s Hornbook 114: And it’s ‘blanket-stiff’ and ‘jungle-hound,’ / And ‘pitch him out the door’.

(US tramp) one who frequents that area of a town or city where criminals, tramps and vagrants congregate.

1909		Pullman Herald (WA) 26 Mar. 2/4: The Sheriff’s off [...] received word that two jungle ‘stiffs’ had been seen in the railroad yards.
1911		Colfax Gaz. (WA) 4 Aug. 5/3: Move 30 jungle Stiffs. Policemen [...] rounded up a bunch of 30 men from the jungles [...] The ‘stiffs’ were given their choice of the road or [...] the chain gang.
1929		V.W. Saul ‘Vocab. of Bums’ in AS IV:5 342: Jungle-stiff — A habitual frequenter of the jungle.
1931		Irwin Amer. Tramp and Und. Sl. 113: Jungle Stiff. – One who rarely leaves the jungles to travel. A bum who lives in jungles instead of in a town.
1932		M. Marshall Travels of Tramp-Royal 229: To tell you the truth, Scottie boy, the Toby’s gone to the dogs, it has. Wot with A.A. scouts, R.A.C. patrol men, speed cops, and them there dizzy hikers, curse me if there’s room for a reg’lar jungle-wallah.
1936		K. Mackenzie Living Rough 117: Hello, Hank, you old jungle stiff.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).

1. (US tramp) to share a campsite with other hoboes; to live in a hoboes’ encampment; to cook up a meal.

1911		D. Runyon ‘The Informal Execution of Soupbone Pew’ in From First to Last (1954) 70: We had jungled up — camped — in a little cottonwood grove a few miles out of town.
1921		P. & T. Casey Gay-cat 107: I ain’t got no use fer them gay-cats. We ought never ter allowed ’em ter jungle-up here ennyways.
1937		J. Worby Other Half 77: I was soon surrounded by a company of hobos [...] inquiring whether I needed any help. I replied: ‘No thanks. I can do my own jungling up’.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
1956		N. Algren Walk on the Wild Side 78: Another afternoon Dove jungled up with four others beside a creek.
1967		(con. 1920s) J. Thompson South of Heaven (1994) 6: Here he was jungled up with six hundred other boes.
1971		(con. 1930s) S. Twerkel (ed.) Hard Times 27: We jungled up there for a little while, and then we bummed the town.
1989		C. Fox American Hobo 71: I was jungled up one time under a railroad bridge or viaduct and living like a king .
1998		Spin July 112: I’m at a hobo gathering at an undisclosed location [...] in the Southwest, maybe a hundred people jungled up on a patch of desert.
2012		W. Keyser ‘Carny Lingo’ in http://goodmagic.com 🌐 Jungle Up [...] to camp out for the evening in a squatter's camp [...] In the early carnival, it meant to dine by stewing, in a communal pot, whatever might be contributed by the assembled men.

2. to gather together, in non-tramp context.

2001		(con. 1964–8) J. Ellroy Cold Six Thousand 410: Freddy T. sent me a tape. Three legislators and six hookers jungled up at the Dunes.
2009		(con. 1960s) J. Ellroy Blood’s a Rover 16: Wayne Senior was jungled up all over the nut Right. He did Klan ops for Mr Hoover.

3. to be allies, to work together.

2001		(con. 1964–8) J. Ellroy Cold Six Thousand 608: Kao and Stanton were jungled up. They ran saigon dope properties. Said properties serviced gooks. Said properties serviced GIs.
2021		J. Ellroy Widespread Panic 83: Jolting Joe and Bondage Bob are jungled up [...] larcenous land deals and sleazoid slum holdings.

4. (US gay) to share a bed with many people, to cuddle up.

1972

B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 119: jungle up (late ’60s) 1. to sleep many people in one bed [...] 2. to cuddle up.

5. (US gay/tramp) to have homosexual anal intercourse.

1972

(con. 1930s–40s) B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 108: Hobo slang (kwn ’30s & ’40s) The actual fucking of another man was called bunking up, jungling up (? fr sl jungle = hobo camp).

see separate entry.

an intense, rough and speedy bout of sexual intercourse.

1995		Pan Productions Take this and drink 🌐 They had wild jungle sex until 4 a.m., when they were both too sore and tired to go at it again.
2005		E. Lapthorne Bonded for Eternity 95: The thought of sweaty, hot, crazy jungle sex simply would not vanish from her mind.

a network of gossip and rumour that brings news (often inaccurate) before the official sources.

1946		American Scholar 15 363/2: ‘Jungle telegraph’ had brought the bitter news to Ada and Kurt .
1953		Baseball Digest Feb. 8/1: Curt heard via the jungle telegraph system that he might be sprung in time for the opening of the baseball season.
1967		R. Conot Rivers of Blood 200: [T]he word had spread from door to door with the rapidity of a jungle telegraph that Watts was going to be hit next [by riots].
1979		Vrijhof & Waardenburg Official and Popular Religion 271: What the English call ‘the old boy network’ or the ‘jungle telegraph.’.
1993		T. Dobson Aikido in Everyday Life 11: And the word goes out on the jungle telegraph that A is a loser.
2000		J.J. Connolly Layer Cake 11: Out of the shadows appeared Mister Mortimer, the legendary pothouse of the parish, who had heard about my supply problems on the jungle telegraph.

(Anglo-Ind.) a person used to living ‘beyond civilisation’, i.e. in the countryside, as opposed to a township or settlement, hence, one showing rustic or boorish behaviour.

1826		[John Galt] Last of the Lairds 146: ‘The murderous old decoit and his Junglewallah of a servant [...] charged upon me like a brace of Mahrattas, and with a lump of a lattee smashed my surveyor’s theodolite’.
1835		E. Roberts Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan I 46: [T]hose who may have barbarized a little during their seclusion amid wilds and fastnesses, are styled par distinction‘jungle-wallahs’.
1848		J.H. Stocqueler Oriental Interpreter 114/1: [A] jungle-wallah is a term indiscriminately applied to a wild cat, or to a gentleman who has been quartered for a considerable period in some desolate part of the country.
1855		M. Rafter Percy Blake III 249: ‘Talk, man, talk is the thing to drive sense into a fellow’s noddle; learn Telinga and Malabars, and talk with the Jungle-wallahs; them’s the fellows.’.
1869		Sporting Rev. Mar. 204: Native canoes or sampans being the only means of transport or carriage known to these veritable jungle-wallahs.
1909		Mrs E. Cotes Burnt Offering 215: ‘Where are your uniforms, you jungle-wallahs?’ demanded the Sub-Inspector in Bengali. ‘I shall report you for being on duty without them’.
1929		R. Campbell ‘Kim Lai’ in Munsey’s Mag. Feb. 57/2: He was a tall, thin youth, none too strong for the hard life of a ‘jungle wallah’.
1933		World’s News (Sydney) 22 Mar. 35/2: The real interest is in the ‘old jungle-wallah who inherited the faculty of ventriloquism, hypnotism, an uncanny sense of direction, and the extraordinary power of communicating with his fellow-men at a distance.