Other forms: bumps, bumped, bumping
To bump into something is to knock against it without meaning to. Your hip bumps the corner of the table, the trolley bumps the shelf, the back wheel bumps the kerb as you park.
The noun is both the knock and the mark it leaves: you hear a bump upstairs at midnight, and the child comes down with a bump on the forehead. A bump is also a rise in a flat surface — the car goes slowly over a speed bump. Bump into a person and it means meeting by chance: 'I bumped into Sara outside the bank.' Prices get bumped up, passengers get bumped off a full flight, and bumpy is the adjective for a road, a landing or a difficult first year. Nothing here is formal; bump lives in everyday speech.
1verbbumpTo knock against something by accident.
“She bumped the table and the water went everywhere.”
2verbmeetTo meet someone by chance.
“I bumped into an old teacher at the station.”
3noundullA dull knock, or the sound one makes.
“There was a bump from the room above.”
4nounswellingA swelling raised on the body by a knock.
“He had a bump over one eye for a week.”
5nounsurfaceA raised part of a surface that is otherwise flat.
“The lane was full of bumps and puddles.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Bump probably began as a noise. English seems to have built the word out of the sound of a dull blow, the way Danish has bump for a thump and bumpe for thumping, and it sits in a family of Germanic words for hollow booming sounds — Middle English bumben meant to make a hollow noise. The dictionaries file it beside bumble and bomb.
From bump (“a shock, blow from a collision”), probably of gmq - origin; compare Danish bump (“a thump”), Danish bumpe (“to thump”), gmq-oda bumpe (“to strike with a clenched fist”), all probably of imitative of the sound origin. Apparently related to Middle English bumben, bummen (“to make a hollow noise”), Dutch bommen (“to hum, buzz”), German Low German bumsen (“to bump, push”), German bummen (“to hum, buzz”), Icelandic bumba (“drum”). More at bum, bumble. Compare also bomb.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA