Slump
verbTo sink down heavily, droop, or fall sharply in value or performance.
How to spell slump
5 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce slump
What does slump mean?
- verbTo sink down heavily, droop, or fall sharply in value or performance.
- nounA sudden or prolonged decline in activity, value, or form.
Slump in a sentence
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verb
After the long shift he would slump into the nearest armchair.
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noun
The housing market entered a deep slump that lasted two years.
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verb
Sales tend to slump in the weeks after the holidays.
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noun
The striker is struggling through a scoring slump this season.
Where does slump come from?
Language of origin: Old Norse
Slump first appears in English in the late 1600s, and it almost certainly comes from a Scandinavian source, being closely related to the Norwegian and Danish slumpe, meaning to fall or stumble into something, and to the dialectal sense of sinking into a bog or marshy ground. The word is partly imitative, its blunt cluster of sounds suggesting the soft, heavy thud of something collapsing or sinking down. The early literal meaning was to drop suddenly into mud or a hole, and from there it broadened to any sudden sinking of the body, as when a tired person droops in a chair. By the 1800s it had taken on a figurative economic life, describing a sharp fall in trade, prices, or activity, which is the sense behind a market slump. The spelling is mercifully straightforward, since it is written almost exactly as it sounds.
How the word is built
- slump (imitative root suggesting a sudden heavy fall or sinking), single morpheme with no prefix or suffix
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