esp. in reference to teleportation by psychic rather than technological means: = teleport v. 1; = teleport v. 2
Chiefly associated with Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination, where the term is used in many forms and compounds (and spelled jaunte in uninflected forms) to refer to teleportation by mental effort alone, and is named for the scientist Charles Fort Jaunte, who discovered the phenomenon.
Space set a final limitation, for no man had ever jaunted farther than a thousand miles. [Ibid. 29/2] Then they all jaunted to the school and back to Times Square.
The air shimmered, seemed to bend, and there he was—a tall dude with a lot of black hair…. ‘I jaunted us here.’
If he breaks out in his sleep he might jaunt unconsciously into somewhere dangerous. [Ibid.] Is your fix accurate enough to jaunt her direct to his bedside?
Carew only Jaunted once more in his entire life. [Ibid. 23/1] It’s the first object we have that was actually teleported—Jaunted—across space.
Bass opened his briefcase and prepared to make the jaunt…. Then he jaunted into the Gallerie Virtual.
‘I’ll have to go out and buy some cat food,’ said Smedley. ‘But this is Zurich in 1926, and I don’t have any Swiss money. Not even a groschen to buy groscheries. Not even a pfennig. Pfooey! Wait a minute: there’s no reason I need to go shopping locally...’ So saying, Smedley unfolded his wormhole and jaunted forth among the infinite tangents of space-time in search of someplace that sold cat food. The thirty-ninth century
‘What should happen is that you’ll jaunt over there; then we’ll use the transporter to come over and confirm you’re healthy before you make the return jaunt.’ ‘Jaunt? You’re using that word—’ The Colonel shrugged. ‘We lifted it from an old SF novel. It’s short and descriptive and differentiates what you’ll be doing—jaunting—from what the transporters do—para-time traversal.’
antedating 1956
Last modified 2022-04-11 10:07:57
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entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries
in OED.