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slump

Pronunciation: /slʌmp/

The English word “slump” has 16 meanings listed here.

verb

  1. To collapse heavily or helplessly.
  2. To decline or fall off in activity or performance.
  3. To slouch or droop.
  4. To lump; to throw together messily.
  5. To fall or sink suddenly through or in, when walking on a surface, as on thawing snow or ice, a bog, etc.
  6. To cause to collapse; to hit hard; to render unconscious; to kill.

noun

  1. A heavy or helpless collapse; a slouching or drooping posture; a period of poor activity or performance, especially an extended period.
  2. A period when a person goes without the expected amount of sex or dating.
  3. A period of poor performance.
  4. A measure of the fluidity of freshly mixed concrete, based on how much the concrete formed in a standard slump cone sags when the cone is removed.
  5. A form of mass wasting in which a coherent mass of loosely consolidated materials or a rock layer moves a short distance down a slope.
  6. A crater or depression (an area where the ground slumps) which forms as a result of such wasting. (A large crater is colloquially called a megaslump.)
  7. A boggy place.
  8. The noise made by anything falling into a hole, or into a soft, miry place.
  9. The gross amount; the mass; the lump.
  10. A cobbler-like dessert cooked on a stove.

Etymology

Probably of North Germanic origin: compare Danish slumpe (“to stumble upon by chance”), Norwegian slumpe (“happen by chance”), Norwegian slumpa (“happen by chance”), Swedish slumpa (“randomize; to sell off”), Swedish slump (“chance, randomness, happenstance”). Compare also German schlumpen (“to trail; draggle; be sloppy”), dialectal Dutch slompen (“to walk clumsily”).

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