Jive is swing music, or a type of quick-paced and energetic jazz. Cow Cow Davenport recorded a song called State Street Jive in 1928. Mitchell Parish defined it as "syncopated music played noisily, and (usually) fast, with great emphasis on rhythm."

Jive is also a dance style that originated among African-Americans in the early 1940s. It is a lively and uninhibited variation of the jitterbug.

Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary defined jive as

(1) (n) Harlemese speech or lingo; also stuff and things. Ex. "did you bring the jive [i.e. liquor]?"

(2) (v) to kid along, to blarney, to give a girl a line. Ex. "He can jive his way into any chick's heart".

Jive can also mean talking in a misleading, false, worthless, or glib way, as in You're jivin' me ... or Don't give me none of that jive talk!

See also Modern Jive.