What is the difference between a tropical rain forest and a jungle?

Question

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I visited my first tropical rain forest earlier this summer and I'm just curious what is the dif between those two

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Answer 1

'Jungle' is a Hindi word borrowed by English since the days of Rudyard Kipling (his novel: 'Jungle book'). It is a generic term to indicate unkempt greenery unfit for human habitation unless 'the jungle is cleared'. It is never a dry area as is being suggested in one of the answers.

'Tropical Rain forest' is a pucca geographic (scientific) term. It is an eco-climatic zone straddling Equator with copious rainfall where massive trees with all types of undergrowth support a vast number of animals from tiny insects right upto predators like Tigers, Jaguars at the top of food chain in tier after tier to the top pinnacles of trees. Amazon and Congo rivers are synonims of them and there are TRFs in Indonesia, South East and South Asia. They are significantly different from the likes of 'Black Forest' or the 'Taiga'.

Answer 2

Jungle is an Indian (South Asian- real Indians, not native Americans) that means "dry area" or, by extension, "wild area."  The idea that the rain forest is a jungle comes from TV and movies.

Answer 3

A tropical rain forest is very large compared to a jungle and has more kinds of trees/plants.

Answer 4

Besides the consistent amount of rainfall, tropical rain forests tend to have  tall broad leaf trees (evergreen, etc) that can grow beyond the canopy (upper most habitat level.) The finely grown trees will then form the tree crowns at top, which pretty much covers up most of the sunlight. The lack of sunlight causes the growth of fast-growing plant life to be inhibited, giving advantage to a more diverse range of plants to slowly take root.

Jungles, on the other hand, may not always have the consistent rainfall attributes of rain forests. For the ones that do share semi/pre-rain forest condition, they usually do not have a diverse and wide tree crown on the top. This causes more sunlight to get through, giving faster growing plants much greater advantage to grow and expand. Hence, lowering the plant diversity relative to a tropical rain forest.