When is a jumper not a jumper?
When it’s a sweater! Most of us would know it’s a jumper in Australia, NZ and the UK, and a sweater in America and Canada. There are other words too for this indispensible garment: pullover, sweatshirt, jersey or guernsey, but these are of old or uncommon usage.
As I’m interested both in fashion and linguistics, I wanted to know the origin of these curious words. Sweater is fairly obvious. Indeed, I read on Wikipedia that “A garment of this type was originally named a sweater either because it was designed to absorb sweat, or the garment was designed to promote a sweat during exercise.”
…the garment was designed to promote a sweat during exercise
That sounds a bit gross. Let’s move on to jumper.
I could find nothing online about the origins of this curious word. Stumped, it occurred to me to turn to my very good copy of the Oxford Dictionary of English. Here is what I found:
jumper1 > noun 1 Brit. a knitted garment typically with long sleeves, worn over the upper body.
2 historical a loose outer jacket worn by sailors
3 N. Amer. a pinafore dress
– ORIGIN mid 19th cent. (in sense 2): probably from dialect jump ‘short coat’, perhaps from Scots jupe ‘a man’s (later also a woman’s) loose jacket or tunic’, via Old French from Arabic jubba. Compare with JIBBA.
Who knew?
A jibba, in case you’re interested, is a long coat worn by Muslim men. It is also of 19th century origin, and is an Egyptian variant of the Arabic jubba. Interestingly, considering the origins of the word, I discovered that a jumper is actually called a pullover in Egypt, and in the UAE a sweater! Go figure. (Or should I say, go knit?)
Fashion Notes
This is a favourite jumper from Zara that I bought in Dubai (I don’t recall how they labelled the garment there, sadly). It is very cosy and warm, and I really like the bracelet length sleeves. It is an unusual mix of 55% acrylic, 30% nylon and 15% alpaca. I normally don’t buy synthetic fabrics, but I could not for the life of me find a wool jumper in Dubai when I very much needed one – it was unseasonably cold during my visit. It’s perfect for autumn (not fall!) here.