Other forms: hampers
A hamper is a large lidded basket, often full of food. A picnic hamper, a Christmas hamper, pack the hamper.
In Britain a hamper is above all a gift of food at Christmas, and hamper schemes that people pay into weekly have collapsed before now and taken the savings with them. To hamper is a different word entirely, meaning to hinder.
1nounhamperA large lidded basket, often of food.
“We packed a picnic hamper with sandwiches, fruit and a flask of tea.”
hamper is a basket.
Middle English hamper is contracted from hanaper, a case for a goblet, from Old French hanap, a drinking cup.
Proto-Germanic
*hnappaz — cup, bowl
Frankish
*hnapp — cup, bowl, basin
Old French
hanapier
Anglo-Norman
hanaper
Middle English
hamper
English, today
hamper
Built from
From Middle English hamper, contracted from hanaper, hanypere, from Anglo-Norman hanaper, Old French hanapier, hanepier (“case for holding a large goblet or cup”), from hanap (“goblet, drinking cup”), from Frankish hnapp (“cup, bowl, basin”), from Proto-Germanic hnappaz (“cup, bowl”). Cognate with Old High German hnapf (“cup, bowl, basin”) (German Napf (“bowl”)), Dutch nap (“cup”), Old English hnæpp (“bowl”). More at nap.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA