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JV

JV

12 4.2
A school or college sports team for younger and less experienced players than the varsity team
  • noun
  • /ˌdʒeɪˈvi/
  • Jargon
translation icon : junior varsity
  • Many athletes start their careers on the JV before moving up to the varsity level.
  • JV team
  • JV squad
  • JV soccer

If you have an A-Team or a varsity team and AJV team, if you take the best players off the JV team and put them on varsity, JV team is not going to be as good.

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Examples

  • I had to bring those guys up from JV just so we could hold a practice.

  • Coach Dickey taught me everything," said Ramsey, who played on the JV team her eighth-grade year.

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  • We need leaders on JV, too.

  • On JV, man, I played both ways.

  • You remember how we dominated in JV basketball?

  • Every few years, the teams received new uniforms, with the old ones passed down to the JV.

    Blog text (6)
  • We had vocal groups I was involved with that play JV soccer.

  • And so for me, my junior year of high school, I was JV, so I wasn't the starter.

  • "I played guard on Concordia's JV my freshman year, then sophomore year they had me as a tight end," he said.

    Blog text (27)
  • The Burns JV won their match in two games, 25-9, 25-20.

    Blog text (17)

Synonyms

junior varsity
vsJV
  • US
5 4.5

A school or college sports team below the main team, often for younger players

is the shortened informal form used instead of that full name
jayvee
vsJV
  • Informal
1 8.5

A school sports team for younger or less experienced players than varsity

refers only to the lower-level team not to an individual player

Surface Forms

JV singular
JVs plural

Morphology

JV = junior + varsity (semi-transparent) = J + V

The term is an initialism of the phrase 'junior varsity', so its meaning is directly derived from those two words for learners who recognise the expansion. [Postprocessing: changed transparency from 'transparent' to 'semi-transparent' for abbreviation]

Etymology

JV is short for junior varsity. Junior means 'younger' and varsity means 'main school team', so JV is the younger or second school team that plays below the varsity team.