▪ I. ˈbumping, vbl. n.
[f. bump v.1 + -ing1.]
1. The action of the verb to bump. a. intr. Sudden (usually repeated) collision or knocking. b. trans. Striking heavily, thrashing. c. Banging the posteriors of a person against a post or wall.
| 1842 Fraser's Mag. Dec., A very tedious passage..Four days of..bumping about. a 1848 Marryat R. Reefer ix, The bumping of obnoxious ushers, and the ‘barring out’ of tyrannical masters. 1862 G. J. Whyte-Melville Ins. Bar vi. (ed. 12) 298 Sundry bumpings and thumpings on the stairs. |
2. (See quot.)
| 1883 W. M. Williams in Knowledge 18 Aug. 99/1 What the practical chemist calls ‘bumping’, or the sudden formation of a big bubble of steam. |
3. Comb., as bumping-race (see bump v.1 3). bumping-post, bumping-table (see quots.).
| 1871 Proctor Light Science 298 A closely contested bumping-race. a 1877 Knight Dict. Mech., Bumping-post (Railway Engineering), a timber or set of timbers at the termination of a railroad track, to limit the motion of the train in that direction. 1889 P. Milford Dict. Mining Terms (ed. 2) 13 A bumping-table is an appliance used in a stamp-mill for treating tailings. It consists of an inclined table, which is given a bumping or jerking motion which serves to force upwards by each successive bump the mineral or heavier portion of the slimes, while the lighter portion is washed off the lower end of the table. 1902 Encycl. Brit. XXXI. 371/2 Bumping Tables.—Rittinger's table is a rectangular gently-sloping plane surface which by a bumping motion throws the heavy particles to one side while the current of water washes down the quartz to another. |
▪ II. bumping, ppl. a.
[f. bump v.1 + -ing2.]
Huge, great; ‘thumping’.
| 1566 T. Nuce Seneca's Octavia (1581) 172 b, All the bumping bignes it doth beare. 1712 Arbuthnot John Bull iv. vi, Thou shalt have a bumping pennyworth. |