Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. intense.

1880

Henley & Stevenson Deacon Brodie I tab.III i: I’m ill — ill with a jumping headache.

2. (orig. US, also jumpin) lively, energetic, exciting.

1938		P. Grey ‘’Twixt Night ’n’ Dawn’ in Afro-American (Baltimore, MD) 3 Dec. 11/5: The many folk [...] having a jumping time with Count Thomas and Henry Graham’s Band.
1943		Pittsburgh Courier (PA) 3 Apr. 20/2: Forget those rumors about a closed Savoy. It’s still open and ‘jumpin’’!
1951		Kerouac On the Road (The Orig. Scroll) (2007) 298: New York [...] I ain’t never been there and they tell me it’s a real jumpin town.
1952		(con. 1948) G. Mandel Flee the Angry Strangers 172: The General, he’s a jumpin cat.
1960		‘Lord Buckley’ Hiparama of the Classics 11: Just like a Jumpin’ garden of king size roses.
1971		M. Novotny Kings Road 167: The King’s Road at 6 am was not the jumping, freaky scene of a sunny afternoon.
1976		C. Eneas Bain Town 10: Some of the best ‘jump-in’ dances were held around it on many a bright moon-lit night.
1979		E. Torres After Hours 148: It was a jumpin’ Friday night.
1986		(con. c.1920) D. Barker Life in Jazz 35: Sometimes these [musical] performers were hired to keep the joint jumping.
1998		Eble Campus Sl. Nov. 4: jumping – exciting, fun.
2012		W.D. Myers All the Right Stuff 86: It was hot, and 125th Street was jumping.

3. (N.Z. gay) of a public lavatory, the site of intense homosexual soliciting.

2010

W. Ings ‘Trolling the Beat to Working the Soob’ in Int’l Jrnl Lexicog. 23:1 62: This toilet [i.e. one that is ‘working’] is said to be active, going-off or jumping.