Question

Based on the excerpt, what is the contextual meaning of the word jostle? Although, as we walked to the Cova through the tough part of town, walking in the dark, with light and singing coming out of the wine-shops, and sometimes having to walk into the street when the men and women would crowd together on the sidewalk so that we would have had to jostle them to get by, we felt held together by there being something that had happened that they, the people who disliked us, did not understand.

Answer 1

“To jostle” means to push, elbow, or bump against someone roughly while moving, typically in a crowd, in order to move past people or get more space. When the narrator says "...so that we would have had to jostle them to get by", they mean they had to push women and men in the crowd in order to be able to move forward.

Answer 2

Jostle means to push or elbow someone so when they "had to jostle them to get by" they had to push the crowd out of the way.