Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) an excitable person.

1918

E.M. Roberts Flying Fighter 210: Cameron [...] had the habit of calling the French ‘puddle jumpers,’ on account of their excitability.

2. (US) any form of small, speedy transport, e.g. a fast small car, a light aeroplane or lightweight truck.

1920		Wash. Times (DC) 1 Oct. 26/4: Other car owners may giggle at the little tin puddle jumper.
1925		T.A. Dorgan in Zwilling TAD Lex. (1993) 66: Where did you get that puddle jumper.
1938		Eve. Post (Wellington) 25 Jan. 8/8: Modern Americanisms [...] ‘struggle buggy’ or ‘puddle jumper’.
1942		in W.C. Fields By Himself (1974) 471: I have tried my darndest [...] to get you a new puddle-jumper to get around this sprawling city.
1944		P. Kendall Dict. Service Sl. n.p.: motorcycle [...] puddle jumper.
1951		Newsweek 5 Nov. 5: To those who fly it, the helicopter is a whirlybird or a puddle jumper.
1961		‘Duncan Lee’ Castro Assassinated (2009) 56: The plane was a twin-engined Cessna, a little puddlejumper.
1962		R. Serling ‘The Whole Truth’ in New Stories from the Twilight Zone 23: It’d be a real blast to take the raunchiest-lookin’ puddle jumper ever to come out of Detroit, take it back to the USSR and put it on display.
1973		G.V. Higgins Digger’s Game (1981) 42: I need a big car. I can’t get in one of them puddlejumpers.
1978		P. Theroux Picture Palace 14: They’re puddle-jumpers. They don’t serve anything to eat on those flights.
1989		(con. 1965) M. Berent Rolling Thunder (1990) 72: It was [...] just a little prop-driven two-seat puddle jumper.
1998		J. Lansdale Rumble Tumble 183: I used to fly puddle jumpers for the U.S. Mail.
2002		Observer Rev. 27 Oct. 2: When the theory about learning to fly this well at the puddle-jumper school began to lose ground, it was added that they received further training on a flight simulator.
2009		J. Stahl Pain Killers 201: I couldn’t get it [i.e. a suitcase] in the overhead on a puddlejumper to Akron.

3. (US) a farmer, an unsophisticated rustic.

1921		Wash. Times (WA) 14 Mar. 18/4: An Illinois puddle jumper wants to give Gamaliel a condensed-milk cow.
1922		Washington Times (DC) 12 Nov. 32/6: That puddlejumper has herded me into a dark corner [...] in one of them Greenwich Village feed barns.
1957		H.B. Allen ‘Pejorative Terms for Midwest Farmers’ in AS XXXIII:4 265: [...] puddle jumper.

4. a homosexual.

2005

Roger’s Profanisaurus in Viz Apr. 49: Yorkie bar n. A puddle jumper, botter or gaylord.