[f. STUMP v.1 + -ER1.]
† 1. ‘A boaster or bragger’ (Bailey, ed. 5, 1731).
2. One employed or skilled in stumping trees.
1828. P. Cunningham, N. S. Wales (ed. 3), II. 279. Two … Dublin thieves, who went out with me, are now … first-rate ‘fellers and stumpers’ in a good clearing gang.
3. Cricket. One who stumps; a wicket-keeper.
1776. in Nyren, Yng. Cricketer’s Tutor (1833), 67. I had almost forgot … Little George, the long stop, and Tom Sueter, the stumper.
1901. Daily Mail, 19 Sept., 3/4. There are few better amateur stumpers than the Hampshire captain.
4. A horse that walks with a stiff leg.
1874. Punch, 11 April, 155/1. If ever I saw a stumper with my own very dear eyes, that stumper is before me.
5. Something (e.g., a question, a task imposed, a reply) that ‘stumps’ one; a poser.
1807. Salmagundi (N.Y.), 20 March, 121. They happened to run their heads full butt against a new reading. Now this was a stumper.
1833. [Seba Smith], Lett. J. Downing, xxii. (1835), 126. I’m afraid we’ll git a stumper … one of these days, that will nock us all into kindlin-wood.
1855. J. Lawrence, in Bosw. Smith, Life Ld. Lawrence (1883), I. 470. One query in writing is often a stumper for a month or two.
1872. Schele de Vere, Americanisms, 187. The American … speaks of a conclusive argument, or a difficult problem: ‘That is a stumper.’
1899. E. Phillpotts, Human Boy, vi. 137. We always noticed, at arithmetic times, that Browne, if he got a stumper, would put up the lid of his private desk and hide behind it.
6. U.S. A stump speaker.
1863. Boston Sunday Herald, 30 Aug., 2/7. An Ohio stumper, while making a speech, exclaimed [etc.].
1884. Chr. Commw., 6 Nov., 49/2. Oratorical stumpers are deceiving and bewitching the nation into the destruction of true polity.
1901. Scotsman, 11 Nov., 9/2. The great majority of the Protestant … preachers are stumpers … for the Republican party.
