jungle

The word “jungle” means a dense tropical forest thick with trees, vines, and wildlife. In plain terms, a thick tropical forest, or by extension any chaotic, every-person-for-themselves situation.

“Jungle” is pronounced JUHNG-gl (/ˈd͡ʒʌŋ.ɡ(ə)l/ in IPA).

Here is “jungle” used in a sentence: “The explorers hacked their way through the jungle with machetes.”

“Jungle” is a noun.

The word “jungle” comes from Sanskrit. From Hindi/Sanskrit jangala, originally meaning rough, uncultivated land, before it came to mean dense tropical forest in English.

“Jungle” is a fairly common word in modern English, usually learned at around the B1 level.

“Jungle” has 2 distinct senses listed in this dictionary. The most common is: a dense tropical forest thick with trees, vines, and wildlife.

A forest is any large area covered with trees, found in many climates. A jungle is a specific kind of dense tropical forest, thick with tangled trees, vines, and wildlife, so all jungles are forests but not all forests are jungles.

A rainforest has a thick canopy overhead that shades the ground, leaving the floor relatively open. A jungle refers to areas where dense undergrowth of vines and plants grows at ground level, often where light reaches the forest, making it harder to move through.

It can be either. Literally, a jungle is a dense tropical forest, but figuratively the word describes any situation or environment seen as chaotic, cutthroat, or lawless, such as calling a crowded city 'a concrete jungle.'