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dump

nounverbnounnouncommon in dialogue

  • //dʌmp//
  • /[dɐm̥p]/

A place where waste or garbage is left; a ground or place for dumping ashes, refuse, etc.; a disposal site.

noun

  1. 1

    A place where waste or garbage is left; a ground or place for dumping ashes, refuse, etc.; a disposal site.

    a toxic waste dump

  2. 2

    A car or boat for dumping refuse, etc.

  3. 3

    That which is dumped, especially in a chaotic way; a mess.

  4. 4

    That which is dumped, especially in a chaotic way; a mess. A disorganized collection of images posted on social media.

  5. 5

    An act of dumping, or its result.

    The new XML dump is coming soon.

  6. 6

    A formatted listing of the contents of program storage, especially when produced automatically by a failing program.

  7. 7

    A storage place for supplies, especially military.

    an ammo dump

    a munitions dump

  8. 8

    slangAn unpleasant, dirty, disreputable, unfashionable, boring, or depressing looking place.

    This place looks like a dump.

    Don't feel bad about moving away from this dump.

    "Okay," he said. "We'll check out of this dump tomorrow."

    ‘What on earth,’ he asked, ‘is a girl like you doing in a dump like this?’

  9. 9

    slangAn act of defecation; a defecating.

    I have to take a dump.

  10. 10

    A sad, gloomy state of the mind; sadness; melancholy; despondency.

    […] doleful dumps the mind oppress […]

    […] I was musing in the midst of my dumps […]

    March slowly on in solemn dump […]

  11. 11

    Absence of mind; reverie.

  12. 12

    A pile of ore or rock.

  13. 13

    obsoleteA melancholy strain or tune in music; any tune.

    Tune a deploring dump […]

    O, play me some merry dump to comfort me.

  14. 14

    obsoleteAn old kind of dance.

  15. 15

    historicalA small coin made by punching a hole in a larger coin (called a holey dollar).

  16. 16

    A temporary display case that holds many copies of an item being sold.

    The back of this display is constructed of a double row of cans which are interlocking. The double row is significant because it provides a source of stock to replenish the dump which will be located in the base of the stand.

    Mass displays to move goods in bulk are dotted here and there throughout the store, particularly at the ends of the gondolas, and considerable use is made of dump displays.

    Although they may have a lot of clutter in promotional cardboard dump displays, that factor is likely to change.

    I remember that Bill made a little cardboard dump, with boots and a whip, for the bookstore displays, and the people in the chain stores were so outraged by this dump they threw it in the trash.

Etymology

From Middle English dumpen, dompen, probably from Old Norse dumpa (“to thump”) (whence Danish dumpe (“to fall suddenly”)), of uncertain origin, possibly imitative of falling, similar to thump.

verb

  1. 1

    To release, especially in large quantities and chaotic manner.

  2. 2

    To discard; to get rid of something one no longer wants.

  3. 3

    To sell below cost or very cheaply; to engage in dumping.

  4. 4

    To copy (data) from a system to another place or system, usually in order to archive it.

    to dump the ROM from a rare Nintendo game cartridge

  5. 5

    To output the contents of storage or a data structure, often in order to diagnose a bug.

  6. 6

    informalTo end a romantic relationship with.

    Sarah dumped Nelson after finding out he was cheating on her.

  7. 7

    obsoleteTo knock heavily; to stump.

  8. 8

    To put or throw down with more or less of violence; hence, to unload from a cart by tilting it

    We dumped the coal onto the fireplace.

  9. 9

    To precipitate (especially snow) heavily.

  10. 10

    Of a surf wave, to crash a swimmer, surfer, etc., heavily downwards.

    Blowing like a grampus from every orifice, I leaned on a passing wave which dumped me[.]

noun

  1. 1

    archaicA thick, ill-shapen piece.

  2. 2

    archaicA lead counter used in the game of chuck-farthing.

    The capons were leaden representations of cocks and hens pitched at by leaden dumps.

Etymology

See dumpling.

noun

  1. 1

    A deep hole in a river bed; a pool.

Etymology

Cognate with Scots dump (“hole in the ground”), Norwegian dump (“a depression or hole in the ground”), German Low German dumpen (“to submerge”), Dutch dompen (“to dip, sink, submerge”).

Forms

plural
dumps
past tense
dumped
past participle
dumped
present participle
dumping
third person singular
dumps
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).