v. [Of obscure origin: it has been compared to JAUNCE v., which it partly approaches in use, but with which it can scarcely be phonetically connected. Several words in -ounce, as bounce, flounce, pounce, trounce, are of obscure history.]
1. intr. To move violently up and down, to fall heavily against something; to bump, bounce, jolt; to go along with a heavy jolting pace.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 265/2. Iowncynge, or grete vngentylle mevynge [v.rr. iownsynge … ioyuncynge], strepitus.
1711. S. Sewall, Diary, 11 Aug. (1879), II. 321. One of the Porters stoop’d to take up his Hat, by which means the … Head of the Coffin jounc’d upon the Ground.
a. 1825. Forby, Voc. E. Anglia, Jounce, to bounce, thump, and jolt, as rough riders are wont to do.
1885. Howells, Silas Lapham (1891), I. 60. The mare jounced easily along.
1886. Hall Caine, Son of Hagar, I. viii. The lawyer was jouncing along towards the house with a lantern in his hand.
1888. Atlantic Monthly, Feb., 267. [The blue jay] stamped his feet, and jounced (the only word to describe a certain raising and violent dropping of the body without lifting the feet).
2. trans. To jolt, bump, or shake up and down, as by rough riding; to give (a person) a shaking.
1581. Mulcaster, Positions, xxiv. (1887), 96. Set him … vpon a trotting iade to iounce him thoroughly or vpon a lame hakney to make him exercise his feete, when his courser failes him.
1834. New Monthly Mag., XLII. 314. You have become a little used to the bouncings and jouncings that greet your first attempts to go to sleep.
1893. Chicago Advance, 31 Aug. At every step of the [camel’s] long, ungainly legs the rider is bounced and jounced around and up and down.
1897. R. Kipling, Captains Courageous, 209. We weren’t runnin’ for a record. Harvey Cheyne’s wife … were sick back, an’ we didn’t want to jounce her.
Hence Jounce sb., a bump, a jolt, in which a thing is raised and allowed to fall by its weight; a jolting pace.
1787. Grose, Prov. Gloss., Jounce, a jolt or shake. A jouncing trot, a hard rough trot. Norf.
1813. Sir J. Cullum, Hist. Hawsted (ed. 2), Vocab. (E. D. S.), Jounce, a joult, a shock, or shaking bout.
1876. Mrs. Whitney, Sights & Ins., II. xvii. She made straight for a bench … sat herself down upon it with a jounce.
1892. Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, in Harper’s Mag., Aug., 341/1. You saw large individuals of the leisure class toiling it in their daily foot-jounce.
1893. Zincke, Wherstead, 261. A jolt, or a shake, is a ‘jounce.’
