A thick elastic cord used for securing things, or relating to the extreme sport of jumping while attached to such a cord.
From 'bungy,' possibly from Hindi 'banji' or 'bhungi' (a swaying motion or type of rope). The modern bungee jumping sport emerged in New Zealand in the 1980s, reviving and reinventing the old word.
Bungee jumping is one of the only extreme sports that genuinely combines ancient practices—people in the Pacific islands have been doing ritual jumps with vines for centuries—with modern physics and elasticity science. The word itself might be borrowed from India's rope-swaying traditions.
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