[see BUMP sb.1]
I. To strike heavily or firmly.
1. trans. † a. generally. To strike heavily, knock, thump. Obs. b. To impinge heavily upon; of persons, to push (a heavy body) violently against, or on any object; to hurt (one’s head, one’s knee, etc.) by knocking against a hard object (sometimes const. against, on); to strike or knock with anything heavy and bulky; to seize (a person) by the arms and legs, and strike his posteriors against a wall, tree, etc.
1611. Cotgr., Baculer, to bumpe on the Posteriorums with a Bat.
1768. Tucker, Lt. Nat., I. 471. That antagonist, whom he bumps and pummels so furiously.
1815. Scott, Guy M., iv. We bumped ashore a hundred kegs.
1842. Tennyson, Epic, 12. I bump’d the ice into three several stars.
Mod. I bumped my head on the low ceiling. Several boys were ‘bumped’ against this wall at the beating of the bounds.
2. intr. To strike solidly, to come with a bump or violent jolt against; to move with a bump or a succession of bumps. Naut. see quot. 1844.
a. 1843. Southey, Lodore, 94. Thumping and flumping and bumping and jumping.
1844. Mrs. Houston, Yacht Voy. Texas, II. 150. The extremely heavy swell on the bar, which … materially increases the chance of a vessel’s ‘bumping’; a term the Americans use for touching on the sand banks.
1857. J. G. Holland, Bay Path, xxv. 301. His heart bumped So heavily against the walls of his chest.
1860. Merc. Mar. Mag., VII. 305. She bumped several times … losing her false keel.
1885. M. D. Chalmers, Law Times, LXXX. 191/1. Due to the cask bumping against the cellar wall.
3. trans. Boat-racing. To overtake and impinge on (the boat in front). Also absol. = ‘make a bump’: see BUMP sb.1 2. (In the boat-races at the English Universities, a boat which bumps another changes place with it in the order of boats on the river.)
1826. Lit. Lounger, 222, in Oxf. Mag. [Extra No.] 18 May, 1887, 2/2. Christ Church bumps her. Ibid., 3/1. I never thought of her bumping the Exeter.
1850. Kingsley, Alt. Locke, xiii. 105. Having, as he informed me, ‘bumped the first Trinity.’
1861. Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxf., I. xiv. 276. Colleges, whose boats have no chance of bumping or being bumped.
II. To bulge out.
† 4. intr. To rise in protuberances, to bulge out, to be convex. Obs.
1566. [see BUMPING ppl. a.].
1579. Studley, Seneca’s Hippolytus (1581), 71. His … necke With … knobby curnels hie out bumping big do swell.
1597. Gerard, Herbal (1633), 1299 (L.). Long fruite … with kernels bumping out.
1603. Holland, Plutarch’s Mor., 1021. Of the round line that part which is … without doth bumpe and bunch.
† 5. trans. To make protuberant, cause to swell up.
1662. J. Bargrave, Pope Alex. VII. (1867), 720. Another triangular, unequilateral, bumped-up, large loadstone.
1719. D’Urfey, Pills, I. 187. He bumpt up our Bellies.
6. trans. Printing. To bump out: To spread out the matter of a book, article, or the like (by wide spacing, arrangement of page, etc.), so as to make it fill the desired number of pages.
1885. Bookseller, 6 July, 49/1. The text had been so ingeniously bumped out by the publishers that it filled twice the number of pages it should have done.
III. 7. Watchmaking: see quot.
1884. F. Britten, Watch & Clockm., 246. ‘Bumping’ wheels, i. e. altering the plane of the teeth with relation to the hole.
IV. 8. The verb-stem used adverbially = With a bump, with sudden collision; bump, bump, with repeated shocks of contact on the part of a heavy moving body.
1806. Bloomfield, Wild Flowers, Poems (1845), 217. Bump in his hat the shillings tumbled.
1863. Kingsley, Water-bab., i. 47. As he came bump, stump, jump, down the steep.
Mod. The carriage went bump, bump, over the sleepers.
