Attested since the 1680s (also spelled jibe and gybe), perhaps from Dutchgijben (a variant of gijpen(“to turn sails suddenly”), whence certainly the form jibe) or else from Danishgibbe(“jib, jibe”), related to Swedish gippa(“jib, jibe, jerk, make jump”). Compare also Middle High Germangempeln(“to spring”), Swedishguppa(“to move up and down”), Swedishgumpa(“to jump, spring”). See jump.
Verb
jib (third-person singular simple presentjibs, present participlejibbing, simple past and past participlejibbed)
(chieflynautical) To shift, or swing around, as a sail, boom, yard, etc., as in tacking.
“Who calls, who calls?” cried Essper; a shout was the only answer. There was no path, but the underwood was low, and Vivian took his horse, an old forester, across it with ease. Essper’s jibbed.
Then he got fever, and had to be carried in a hammock slung under a pole. As he weighed sixteen stone I had no end of rows with the carriers. They jibbed, ran away, sneaked off with their loads in the night—quite a mutiny.
“What say you to the young lady herself?” said Craigengelt; “the finest young woman in all Scotland, one that you used to be so fond of when she was cross, and now she consents to have you, and gives up her engagement with Ravenswood, you are for jibbing. I must say, the devil’s in ye, when ye neither know what you would have nor what you would want.”
1992, Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety, Harper Perennial, published 2007, pages 401–2:
Some of us began to jib when the family began to collect portraits of their new son to decorate their walls [...].
2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 318: