Dump

How to spell dump

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce dump

What does dump mean?

1. verbTo put down, drop, or get rid of something carelessly or all at once.
2. nounA site where rubbish or waste is left or stored.

Dump in a sentence

• verb

  He would dump his keys and wallet on the hall table every evening.

• noun

  We drove the broken appliance to the local dump on Saturday.

• verb

  The company tried to dump its surplus stock at a low price.

• noun

  The council closed the old dump and opened a recycling centre instead.

Where does dump come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

The exact origin of dump is genuinely uncertain, but the evidence points toward a Scandinavian or Low German source related to words like the Danish and Norwegian dumpe, meaning to fall suddenly or plump down. It surfaced in Middle English around the 1300s with the sense of throwing something down heavily or letting it fall in a mass, which is still the core meaning today. The idea of unloading rubbish in one careless heap grew naturally from that, and by the nineteenth century a dump was a named place where refuse was tipped. The word is probably imitative in feel, since its blunt, heavy sound suits the action of letting something drop with a thud. Because it is short and phonetic, the spelling is straightforward, with no silent letters or doubled consonants to trip a writer up.

How the word is built

• dump (single root, no prefix or suffix; from a Scandinavian or Low German base meaning to fall or set down heavily)