Other forms: ramps
A ramp is a slope joining two different levels. A way up that does not need steps.
Accessibility made it an everyday word, since a wheelchair ramp is now a legal requirement in most public buildings. Loading ramps get goods into lorries and a ramp gets a car onto a transporter. Motorways have on-ramps and off-ramps in American English, called slip roads in Britain. The phrasal verb ramp up means to increase something steadily, and that is now the commonest business use of the word.
1nounrampA sloping surface joining two levels.
“They pushed the trolley up the ramp.”
Proto-Germanic
*hrimpaną — to shrivel, shrink
Frankish
*hrampōn — to contract oneself, wrinkle, rumple, crumple, curve
Old French
ramper — to crawl, climb, scale up
Middle French
rampe
French
rampe
English, today
ramp
From French rampe, from Middle French rampe, deverbal of ramper, from Old French ramper (“to crawl, climb, scale up”), from Frankish hrampōn (“to contract oneself, wrinkle, rumple, crumple, curve”), from Proto-Germanic hrimpaną (“to shrivel, shrink”). Cognate with German Rampf (“retraction, curvature, shrinkage, spasm”). a doublet of romp. Akin also to Old English ġehrimpan (“to wrinkle, rimple, rumple”), Old High German rimpfan (German rümpfen (“to wrinkle up”)). Compare Danish rimpe (“to fold" (archaic), "to baste”), Icelandic rimpa. More at rimple.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA