Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In some places, a laborer employed to load and unload vessels in port; a dock-hand; a longshoreman; a stevedore.
- n. A militiaman.
- n. In zoology, one who lumps several described species, genera, etc., in one: opposed to splitter.
Wiktionary
- n. The European eelpout; -- called also lumpen.
- n. Extra labor hired by a trucking company to assist a driver and/or customer unloading or loading a truck.
- n. biology, linguistics A scientist in one of various fields who prefers to keep categories such as species or dialects together in larger groups.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Zoöl.) The European eelpout; -- called also
lumpen . - n. One who lumps.
- n. A laborer who is employed to load or unload vessels when in harbor.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a laborer who loads and unloads vessels in a port
- n. a taxonomist who classifies organisms into large groups on the basis of major characteristics
Etymologies
- lump + -er (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Dickerson, grateful to have even a temp job, was taken on as a "lumper" -- someone who schleps boxes to and from trailers all day long.”
The Huffington Post: The New Blue Collar: Temporary Work, Lasting Poverty And The American Warehouse
“lumper" -- that is, a contractor in a small way who took work in the”
“Oh, and I had no idea that, last year, Greg Paul (a notorious taxonomic "lumper" since at least the '80s) split the taxon Iguanodon into Iguanodon, Mantellisaurus, and Dollodon.”
"But I could sleep with you there. I could sleep with you there."
“Ignacio was a "lumper," unloading the large containers that come to the warehouses from the ports.”
Tom Woodruff: Depression in California's Inland Empire Shows Need for Employee Free Choice Act
“Yet, I am an inveterate lumper -- and only a halfhearted splitter -- so I feel compelled to connect the dots between these disparate events in an attempt to delineate our era, to name our moment.”
“By the end of the week he was a transient lumper on a river steamboat.”
“Of course, it must be remembered that along with such frivolous occupations I was trying to get work as wop, lumper, and roustabout.”
“A lucky lumper might be assigned a container filled with boxes of Kleenex or stuffed animals, while an unlucky lumper might pull a container filled with kiddie swimming pools or 200-pound trampolines.”
The Huffington Post: The New Blue Collar: Temporary Work, Lasting Poverty And The American Warehouse
“One former lumper told HuffPost his temp status once cost him a loan -- from a payday lender.”
The Huffington Post: The New Blue Collar: Temporary Work, Lasting Poverty And The American Warehouse
“He got on as a lumper at a warehouse but was fired earlier this year, he says.”
The Huffington Post: The New Blue Collar: Temporary Work, Lasting Poverty And The American Warehouse
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘lumper’.
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Behold, The Potato
All things potato. History, foodways and potato recipe names, cultivar or variety names, farming, production, diseases and pests, folklore.
spud, tater, starchy, tuberous, <i>Solanum tubero..., <i>Phytophthora i..., potato blight, late blight, blight, Ireland, Irish potato, lumper and 331 more...
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While Europe Slept/America Alone/Amer...
Words gathered during my recent "current affairs" reading bender.
It's not an addiction, I can quit any time I want.proforma, distaff, senescent, simplisme, arrondissement, brasserie, cynosure, entente, inure, elision, contrariety, calumny and 53 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for lumper.
bilby I love mollusque. May 16, 2009
madmouth I too, mollusque, for reasons less noble (pedantry, that is). May 16, 2009
mollusque I'm more on the splitter side, bilby. In my experience if a splitter is wrong, it's still possible to tell what was meant. If a lumper is wrong, it's hard to tell what was meant.
For example, let's suppose you think there are three species of snails, A, B, C, in a genus, but a splitter decides there are five, A, B, C, D, E. You can map the splitter's concepts to your own: perhaps A = A, B|D = B, C|E = C. If a lumper says there is only one species A, you don't know if only A was present, or also B and C.
DNA sequencing techniques have shown that splitters are right more often than lumpers. May 16, 2009
bilby Are you a lumper, mollusque? May 15, 2009