[bouns] 
verb, bounced, bounc⋅ing, noun, adverb | 1. | to spring back from a surface in a lively manner: The ball bounced off the wall. |
| 2. | to strike the ground or other surface, and rebound: The ball bounced once before he caught it. |
| 3. | to move or walk in a lively, exuberant, or energetic manner: She bounced into the room. |
| 4. | to move along in a lively manner, repeatedly striking the surface below and rebounding: The box bounced down the stairs. |
| 5. | to move about or enter or leave noisily or angrily (fol. by around, about, out, out of, into, etc.): He bounced out of the room in a huff. |
| 6. | (of a check or the like) to fail to be honored by the bank against which it was drawn, due to lack of sufficient funds. |
| 7. | to cause to bound and rebound: to bounce a ball; to bounce a child on one's knee; to bounce a signal off a satellite. |
| 8. | to refuse payment on (a check) because of insufficient funds: The bank bounced my rent check. |
| 9. | to give (a bad check) as payment: That's the first time anyone bounced a check on me. |
| 10. | Slang. to eject, expel, or dismiss summarily or forcibly. |
| 11. | a bound or rebound: to catch a ball on the first bounce. |
| 12. | a sudden spring or leap: In one bounce he was at the door. |
| 13. | ability to rebound; resilience: This tennis ball has no more bounce. |
| 14. | vitality; energy; liveliness: There is bounce in his step. This soda water has more bounce to it. |
| 15. | the fluctuation in magnitude of target echoes on a radarscope. |
| 16. | Slang. a dismissal, rejection, or expulsion: He's gotten the bounce from three different jobs. |
| 17. | with a bounce; suddenly. |
| 18. | bounce back, to recover quickly: After losing the first game of the double-header, the team bounced back to win the second. |
| bounce (bouns) v. bounced, bounc·ing, bounc·es v. intr.
bounce backTo recover quickly, as from a setback: The patient bounced back to good health. [Probably from Middle English bounsen, to beat.] |
bounce
bounce
1. (Perhaps by analogy to a bouncing check) An electronic mail message that is undeliverable and returns an error notification (a "bounce message") to the sender is said to "bounce".
2. To play volleyball. The now-demolished D. C. Power Lab building used by the Stanford AI Lab in the 1970s had a volleyball court on the front lawn. From 5 PM to 7 PM was the scheduled maintenance time for the computer, so every afternoon at 5 would come over the intercom the cry: "Now hear this: bounce, bounce!", followed by Brian McCune loudly bouncing a volleyball on the floor outside the offices of known volleyballers.
3. To engage in sexual intercourse; probably from the expression "bouncing the mattress", but influenced by Roo's psychosexually loaded "Try bouncing me, Tigger!" from the "Winnie-the-Pooh" books.
Compare boink.
4. To casually reboot a system in order to clear up a transient problem. Reported primarily among VMS users.
5. (VM/CMS programmers) Automatic warm-start of a computer after an error. "I logged on this morning and found it had bounced 7 times during the night"
6. (IBM) To power cycle a peripheral in order to reset it.
[The Jargon File]
(1994-11-29)
bounce
In addition to the idioms beginning with bounce, also see get the ax (bounce); more bounce for the ounce; that's how the ball bounces.