What it means
It means a person gets swarmed and attacked by a group, usually fast and dirty with no fair warning. People say someone got jumped when they were set on out of nowhere, often for robbery, beef, or just straight-up coward energy. It's harsh street slang and it carries that cheap-shot feeling right in the wording.
Usage examples
"Nicholas turned up with a busted lip and said he got jumped walking home, so now everyone's telling him not to cut through that alley again."
"Two guys jumped my cousin walking back from the deli on Hudson Street, took his wallet and a half-eaten sandwich, and the precinct cops told him to file a report but had no real hope of catching anybody on a Saturday night in January."
"The high school across the street had three students jumped at the bus stop in October, the principal called an emergency parent meeting, and the school district hired two extra crossing guards starting Monday morning at quarter past seven sharp."
"He got jumped outside the corner store by like four dudes, so don't tell me it was some fair fight."
"My brother got jumped after the party letting out, phone gone, chain gone, whole night turned rotten."
Where it comes from
Mid-twentieth-century American urban slang where the verb jump captured the surprise element of an ambush, the assailants leaping out from doorways or alleys onto an unsuspecting target. The phrase travelled out of inner-city crime reporting into general usage, surviving on TV cop shows and now in social-media accounts of late-night incidents at the bus station of the suburbs.
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