thump
/θʌmp/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.97 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Used to replace the vulgar or blasphemous element in "what the hell" and similar phrases.
Colloquial; Dated
Example Sentences
- "... and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be content."
- "The watchman gave so very great a thump at my door last night, that I awakened at the knock."
- "An interesting feature of the church is the invisible clock, which you can hear thumping away as you enter. Constructed in 1525, it is one of the oldest timepieces in England. It chimes the hours and the quarters, and every three hours it plays a hymn. But it has no faces."
- "Where the thump have you been?!"
- "These bastard Bretons, whom our fathers / Have in their own land beaten, bobb'd, and thump'd."
- "Kasper Schmeichel brilliantly denied Marouane Chamakh before Bacary Sagna thumped home a second, though Bradley Johnson's screamer halved the deficit."