slump

UK/slʌmp/US/slʌmp/

verbB23 meanings Common in everyday speech and writing · #7,701 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: slumped, slumping, slumps

To slump is to drop heavily into a seat or a posture. All the effort goes out of you at once.

The body is the usual subject: slumped in a chair, slumped over the wheel, shoulders slumped. It always suggests weight and defeat rather than a decision to sit down. The word has a separate life in economics, where a slump is a sharp fall — a slump in sales, the slump of the 1930s — and the verb goes with it. Both senses share the same picture of something dropping suddenly and then staying down.

Definitions of slump

1verbslumpTo sit or fall heavily, with no energy left.B2
“He slumped into the nearest chair.”
2verbpriceOf a price or amount, to fall sharply.B2
“Sales slumped in the last quarter.”
3nountradeA sharp fall in trade or activity.B2
“The industry never recovered from the slump.”

Where it comes from

Probably of gmq - origin: compare Danish slumpe (“to stumble upon by chance”), Norwegian slumpe (“happen by chance”), Norwegian slumpa (“happen by chance”), Swedish slumpa (“randomize; to sell off”), Swedish slump (“chance, randomness, happenstance”). Compare also German schlumpen (“to trail; draggle; be sloppy”), dialectal Dutch slompen (“to walk clumsily”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove, Body Language & Gestures

First appears in chapter 31 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

← Vocabulary