[Goes with THUMP v.]
1. ‘A hard heavy dead dull blow with something blunt’ (J.), as with a club or the fist; a heavy knock; also, the heavy sound of such a blow (not so dull as a thud). Also fig.
1552. Huloet, Bownce, noyse or thumpe, bombus, crepitus.
1563. B. Googe, Eglogs, iv. (Arb.), 43. Thou yat throwest the thunder thumps from Heauens hye, to Hell.
a. 1625. Fletcher, Nice Valour, III. ii. Now your thump, A thing deriv’d first from your hemp-beaters, Takes a man’s wind away, most spitefully.
1675. Hobbes, Odyss., 262. Down with a thump he falls upon his face.
1716. Addison, Freeholder, No. 50, ¶ 4. Their Thumps and Bruises might turn to account,… if they could beat each other into good Manners.
1784. Cowper, Task, I. 357. Thump after thump resounds the constant flail.
1834. Dickens, Sk. Boz, Steam Excurs. The unfortunate little victim … receiving sundry thumps on the head from both his parents.
1886. A. Winchell, Walks Geol. Field, 85. Heavy thumps sometimes heard before and during the action, in geyser-holes.
† b. To cry thump: to make a thumping sound; to thump. Obs.
1601. B. Jonson, Poetaster, III. iv. How can I hold my fist from crying thump?
1604. Dekker, 1st Pt. Honest Wk., I. vii. Did you not heare something crie thump?
c. Repeated, expressing a series of thumps.
1850. Browning, Christmas Eve, iv. 64. The thump-thump and shriek-shriek Of the train.
1885. Fargus, Slings & Arrows, x. 193. The steady, monotonous thump, thump, thump of the engines.
1899. Werner, Capt. of Locusts, 69. The thump-thump of the women’s pestles pounding the maize in the grain-mortar.
d. adverbially: With a thump (also fig.).
1704. N. N., trans. Boccalini’s Advts. fr. Parnass., I. 56. Here Tacitus … bid him leave off his fulsome Preambles, and fall thump to the Business of the Impeachment.
1840. Thackeray, Catherine, i. Which … made his heart to go thump-thump! against his side.
2. spec. a. A knocking or pounding of machinery arising from slackness at a joint where there is reciprocal motion. b. pl. A beating of the chest in the horse due to spasmodic contractions of the diaphragm, analogous to the hiccup in man.
1903. Rep. U.S. Dept. Agric. (On Dis. Horse, 140). Thumps or Spasm of the Diaphragm…. Thumps is produced by causes similar to those that produce congestion of the longs and dilatation or palpitation of the heart.
