Bumps

How to spell bumps

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bumps

What does bumps mean?

1. nounRaised or swollen areas on a surface, or jolts felt when travelling over uneven ground.
2. verbKnocks or collides lightly against something or someone.

Bumps in a sentence

• noun

  The back road was full of bumps that rattled the whole car.

• verb

  He always bumps his head on the low beam in the cellar.

• noun

  Several small bumps appeared on her arm after the insect bites.

• verb

  The trolley bumps into the shelf whenever the wheel sticks.

Where does bumps come from?

Language of origin: Other

The base word 'bump' first appears in English around the late 1500s and is widely judged to be imitative, that is, a word coined to echo the dull, heavy sound made when one object strikes another. Words of this echoic type often have no neat foreign pedigree, and 'bump' is a good example, though some scholars link it to a Scandinavian root suggesting a thump or knock. From the sound itself the meaning spread in two directions: the action of knocking against something, and the raised lump or swelling that such a knock leaves behind. By the 1600s 'bump' was being used for any rounded protrusion, whether a pothole in a road or a swelling on the skin. The plural and verb form 'bumps' simply adds the regular English '-s' ending, so the only thing to remember in spelling is the single, doubled-free 'mp' cluster followed by 's'.

How the word is built

• bump (imitative root: a knock or swelling)
• -s (plural noun / third-person singular verb ending)