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Monday 3 February 2014

Spot the frippet: tump.

This is an easy spot, but it's such a lovely word I couldn't resist it.
 
Tump!
 
It sounds like the noise you'd make on a small drum, but actually tump isn't anything to do with sounds at all. A tump is a small mound, especially if it's a round barrow, which is a stone age burial place.
 
 
 

 
In Worcestershire, England, even a large barrow can be a tump, such as Whittington Tump. In fact Worcestershire loves the word tump so much that they seem to use it whenever they have the least excuse. The gorgeous unty tump is a mole hill.
 
For hill walkers, a tump is any hill in Britain with a prominence of over 30m. That's not very high at all, but then there are are over 16,000 of them, so covering the lot would still would make a fair walk.
 
A tump can also be a clump of trees, shrubs or grass.
 

 If you're in America then a tump or tumpline is something entirely different. Here's it's a band worn just under the hairline to support a load.

 
That sort of tump isn't going to be an easy spot for most of us, but it might be worth trying out a homemade one as an experiment if you buy too many packs of toilet roll, say, in the supermarket.

Do let us know how you get on.
 
Spot the Frippet: tump. No one is sure where the word for hill comes from, but there's a Welsh word twmpath which was once applied to a mound or village green. The strap sort of tump is Algonquian. There's also a Abnaki word mádŭmbi, which means pack strap.
 

7 comments:

  1. I love this word!
    I first came across it in the form of anty-tump - a dialect word for an anthill.
    It's way more delightful to say, as it has much more oomph to it!
    Great word. It needs to be used more!
    Tump!

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    1. I'm very glad you like it, Jingles. Anty-tump and Unty tump sound like married trolls who run a tea shop amongst the higher tumps serving ditch water and poliwogs to poor benighted travellers.

      Actually, come to think about it, I think I might once have stopped off there.

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    2. And that of course was at the tea-tump! :)

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  2. In my area (Southeast Texas), "tump" is synonymous with word such as "bump" or "tip", most often used with "over", for example: "Don't tump that over!" or, "I accidentally tumped over a whole pitcher of tea!".

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    1. That's really interesting, Emily. The derivation tip+bump sounds convincing to me. It's a dead useful word in that sense which I'm sure I shall use often. Thank you!
      There's absolutely no chance at all of my ever putting tea in a pitcher, though.

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  3. Yes, I like TUMP too...the Texan connection is interesting to read about!

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    1. Isn't the world a multifarious and marvellous place!

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