All that jibe jive

[nancylebov]

One of the contemporary[1] errors which drives me up the wall is people who use "jive" when they clearly mean "jibe".

To my mind "jive" (can be used as noun or verb) means "bullshit". "Jibe" means "is consistent".

People keep saying things like "that jives with the facts". It would be kind of cool if they meant it was deceptively dancing with the facts (jive is also associated with jazz, both dancing and music), but they never seem to.

Googling "jives with" immediately turns up Clearspace: Collaboration that Jives with Enterprises: Choice is good, but Jive Software, known for its Wildfire XMPP (Jabber) server, believes that the lack of a uniform, extensible platform means that collaboration suffers. Knowledge traded within these mediums can wind up collecting dust within rarely visited intranet pages and email archives.. They clearly mean to say that their software is consistent with other software, not that it's bullshit. I suspect I'm not going to win this fight.

Jibe has a meaning in sailing which doesn't have anything to do with any of this, but seems to be better known than "is consistent". It can also mean joke (that one is also spelled gibe), but this entry isn't a practical joke.

The Free Online Dictionary has "To be in accord; agree: Your figures jibe with mine." as the second definition, so I wasn't hallucinating about what the word sometimes means.

Here's someone who's noticed the same thing I have:“Gibe” is a now rare term meaning “to tease.” “Jibe” means “to agree,” but is usually used negatively, as in “the alibis of the two crooks didn’t jibe.” The latter word is often confused with “jive,” which derives from slang which originally meant to treat in a jazzy manner (“Jivin’ the Blues Away”) but also came to be associated with deception (“Don’t give me any of that jive”).

This looks like a good site: I don't care if you use impact as a verb. The site says that most people don't care, but those who do care a lot. This matches my experience. (The site says that you wouldn't say "alittle", so don't say "alot". I'd normally use "alot", I think, but this post might be an invitation to nitpick....)

I was talking with dcseain about this, and he'd never seen "jibe" in the sense of compatible.

So, what are your meanings for jibe and jive?

[1] Errors go in and out of fashion, and someone who's *really* trying to set dialogue or text in a given period would try to get the errors right, or might even do it instinctively. For example, using "infer" to mean "imply" used to be common about ten or fifteen years ago. (Afaik, the error never went the other way.) More recently, it seems to me that neither word is used as much. I assume that most people noticed that there was something getting corrected, but going back to the old distinction seemed to much like work.

Comments

[nitebytes.livejournal.com]

I'm part sailor (I spent a good few years racing sailing dinghys), so to me Jibe only has one meaning, changing direction with the wind going around the rear of the boat, which sends the mainsail (and hence the boom with it) flying across the boat at hight speed (a great need to duck below it occurs at this time otherwise a) you get hit, hard, or b) you get trapped in the wrong place at the wrong time you capsize.
That's the only meaning of the word Jibe I've come across (but then the other meaning you mention could be an Americanism that we Brits just don't have)

Jive - Bullshit or Dance.
"Don't jive me man" - bullshit.
"C'mon honey, Let's Jive" - Dance.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

"Jive" was also slang for pot, back in the 30s. The "Reefer Songs" collection has some examples: "All The Jive Is Gone," and "The Man With The Jive" come readily to mind. Even in the songs on the album, though, you can hear the word used in one or more of its other senses.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I mostly have the same meanings you do. A few additional details:

"You jive with that?" = Are you cool with that? Are you okay with that happening? Didn't see that usage above.

Jive seems to have mostly gone out of vogue; it was already on its way out in Airplane!'s infamous "I speak Jive" scene. But AFAICT jibe is completely gone; it's only used in that one phrase, "X jibes with X" (or variants, "That jibes with X", etc.) And it's a funny word, with a final voiced plosive that can easily be heard or spoken as its neighbor v. Heck, in Spanish the distinction is eroding...

So this may be a case of one word walking into the role of another once that one has faded. Or maybe as you say it's just a phase, and those jive-talkin' turkeys will jibe with our expectations in a few years.

[dmk.livejournal.com]

I'm familiar with the use and definitions of jibe and jive that you mentioned. I strongly disagree about using "alot"; it really grates on me, and doesn't jibe with my understanding of English grammar. I'll have to take you at your word that you aren't jiving me about that one.

[hipgnosis6.livejournal.com]

How much of the misuse is driven by an inability to hear or produce one or both of the differentiating phonemes?

I don't know you (I spotted this on my friends of friends list), but I had the great opportunity to earn a bachelor's degree in linguistic anthropology. B and V are closely related sounds and not everybody may be able to distinguish them. The plum's in the pudding: my own mother cannot pronounce the word "volleyball", and instead says "bollyboll." She does not have a speech impediment, deafness issues or an accent. Repeat the word to "correct" her and she'll say, "Yes, that's what I said."

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I was enchanted, towards the end of Farthing at being able to have a character chide the POV character for using "contact" as a verb -- something people really did get miffy about in the 1930s, but which is now entirely accepted.

[malkingrey.livejournal.com]

I was just going to make the same comment. And it's Spanish, I think, that has the sound that's neither B nor V but something halfway between them (I think "bilabial slit fricative" was the technical term) that tends to get heard/pronounced as either one or the other by native English speakers. So we've probably got some convergence going on.

That said, I don't use "jive" when I mean "jibe" in my own speech, but I added both words to my vocabulary first through the written word, not through hearing them spoken. Someone who's picked up one or the other or both through auditory channels might well hear them as the same word, and opt for whichever spelling is more familiar . . . which would probably be "jive."

[dmk.livejournal.com]

Oooh, linguistic anthropology sounds like fun!

I'm definitely familiar with basic linguistics, and how closely related certain sounds are. In my own family (from near NYC), my grandmother (who was born in 1903) used to say "ellum" instead of "elm", and could not hear the distinction. This was, in fact, one of my formative experiences in understanding that people could speak with different accents or even dialects, and it can vary not just geographically but also generationally.

[zsero.livejournal.com]

"The plum's in the pudding"? I've never heard that one before. I do keep hearing people say "the proof is in the pudding", which makes no sense. They're mangling "the proof of the pudding is in the eating". But the "plum" version's new to me.

[19-crows.livejournal.com]

I have the same definitions as you, roughly. It really annoys me to hear "jive" used in place of "jibe". "That jives with what we know about it."

[madfilkentist]

To me, "jive" means a jazz style, and as a secondary but old-fashioned meaning, being "with it" (e.g., "hep to the jive"). I understand "don't give me that jive" from context, but don't think of that as an independent meaning, any more than "and all that jazz."

[lpetrazickis.livejournal.com]

To me, a 'jibe' is an insult or snarky comment. My preferences don't jive with yours.:)