[prob. f. JUMP sb.2]
1. A kind of loose outer jacket or shirt reaching to the hips, made of canvas, serge, coarse linen, etc., and worn by sailors, truckmen, etc.; also applied to any upper garment of similar shape, e.g., a hooded fur jacket worn by Eskimos.
1853. Kane, Grinnell Exp., vi. (1856), 45. A ‘jumper’ or close jacket, slipping on like a shirt, and hooded like the cowl of a Franciscan monk.
c. 1860. H. Stuart, Seaman’s Catech., 80. 1 set of jumper and trousers for dirty work.
1860–1. Gosse, Rom. Nat. Hist. (1866), 255. A loose coarse canvas frock, which, in colonial phrase, is called a ‘jumper.’
1879. Unif. Reg., in Navy List (1882), July, 496/2. On the blue frock or jumper the badge is to be of red cloth.
1893. Selous, Trav. S. E. Africa, 87. I had a warm jumper over my cotton shirt.
b. Comb., as jumper-clad adj.
1865. F. H. Nixon, Peter Perfume, 172. The jumper-clad diggers so rowdy and free.
2. (See quot.)
1894. Daily Tel., 13 April, 5/6. Witnesses … deposed that the ‘jumper,’ a sort of sack used for purposes similar to that of the strait waistcoat, was in constant use in the workhouse.
