Definition of "jostle"
jostle
verb
third-person singular simple present jostles, present participle jostling, simple past and past participle jostled
(transitive, intransitive) To bump into or brush against while in motion; to push aside.
Quotations
Besides, various are the paths to power and fame which by accident or choice men pursue, and though they jostle against each other, for men of the same profession are seldom friends, yet there is a much greater number of their fellow-creatures with whom they never clash. But women are very differently situated with respect to each other—for they are all rivals.
1791 (date written), Mary Wollstonecraft, chapter 13, in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, 1st American edition, Boston, Mass.: […] Peter Edes for Thomas and Andrews, […], published 1792
It is not that there are several systems of movement, physical, intellectual, and moral, which are perpetually jostling each other, or which clash whenever they come in contact, and which move on by the one vanquishing the other. But, on the contrary, each of these economies takes its uninterrupted course, as if there were no other moving within the same space […]
1832, [Isaac Taylor], “Chapter 12”, in Saturday Evening. […], London: Holdsworth and Ball, page 214
[…] when the lord of a Lincolnshire or Shropshire manor appeared in Fleet Street, he was as easily distinguished from the resident population as a Turk or a Lascar. […] Bullies jostled him into the kennel. Hackney coachmen splashed him from head to foot. […]
1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter 3, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volumes (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, pages 370-371
(transitive) To be close to or in physical contact with.
Quotations
[…] the advantages of diversification of structure, with the accompanying differences of habit and constitution, determine that the inhabitants, which thus jostle each other most closely, shall, as a general rule, belong to what we call different genera and orders.
1859 November 24, Charles Darwin, chapter 4, in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, […], London: John Murray, […], page 114
(intransitive) To contend or vie in order to acquire something.
Quotations
Dick, who, in serious earnest, was supposed to have considerable natural talents for his profession, and whose vain and sanguine disposition never permitted him to doubt for a moment of ultimate success, threw himself headlong into the crowd which jostled and struggled for notice and preferment.
1819, Jedadiah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], chapter I, in Tales of My Landlord, Third Series. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], page 22
The relative popularity of the Kyle of Lochalsh service is unsurprising, given how the famous route jostles with the West Highland Line for the title of Scotland's (and indeed the world's) most scenic rail journey.
2021 October 20, Paul Stephen, “Leisure and pleasure on the Far North Line”, in RAIL, number 942, page 47
noun
plural jostles
The act of jostling someone or something; push, shove.
Quotations
I had full hold of her Watch, but giving a great Jostle, as if somebody had thrust me against her, and in the Juncture giving the Watch a fair pull, I found it would not come, so I let it go that Moment, and cried out as if I had been killed, that somebody had trod upon my Foot […]
1722, Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders, London: J. Cooke, 1765, p. 241
The action of a jostling crowd.
Quotations
For years to come, the average of lone women will be largely increased; and the demand, always great, for some means by which they many provide for themselves, in the rude jostle of the world, will become more urgent and imperative.
1865, Harriet Beecher Stowe (under the pseudonym Christopher Crowfield), The Chimney-Corner, Boston: Ticknor & Field, 1868, Chapter 12, p. 291