Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A clustered mass; a lump.
  • noun A thick grouping, as of trees or bushes.
  • noun A heavy dull sound; a thud.
  • intransitive verb To form lumps or thick groupings.
  • intransitive verb To walk or move so as to make a heavy dull sound.
  • intransitive verb To gather into or form lumps or thick groupings of.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A thick, short, unformed piece of wood or other solid substance; a shapeless mass.
  • noun A cluster; a small, closely gathered group: used especially of trees or shrubs, but sometimes of other things and of persons.
  • noun A thick sole secured to an ordinary boot-sole by springs or by cement.
  • noun A small spiral curl of hair pressed flat between the disk-shaped ends of a pair of crimping-tongs, so as to lie close to the head.
  • noun A bivalve mollusk of the family Mactridæ, Lutraria elliptica. It has a broad flattish shell about 5 inches long and 3 inches high. It lives chiefly in muddy estuaries, buried a foot or two deep.
  • noun An aggregation of bacteria resulting from the action of agglutinins. See serum diagnosis.
  • To walk heavily and clumsily.
  • To form a clump or cluster; cluster; aggregate: said of the agglutination of certain bacteria in response to the action of definite substances. See serum diagnosis.
  • To form (bacteria) into a clump or cluster; agglutinate.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To arrange in a clump or clumps; to cluster; to group.
  • intransitive verb Prov. Eng. To tread clumsily; to clamp.
  • noun An unshaped piece or mass of wood or other substance.
  • noun A cluster; a group; a thicket.
  • noun The compressed clay of coal strata.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A cluster or lump
  • noun A thick group or bunch, especially of bushes or hair.
  • noun A dull thud.
  • verb transitive To form clusters or lumps
  • verb transitive To gather into thick groups
  • verb intransitive To walk with a heavy footfalls.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb walk clumsily
  • verb come together as in a cluster or flock
  • verb make or move along with a sound as of a horse's hooves striking the ground
  • noun a heavy dull sound (as made by impact of heavy objects)
  • noun a compact mass
  • verb gather or cause to gather into a cluster
  • noun a grouping of a number of similar things

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Probably Low German klump, from Middle Low German klumpe, cluster of trees.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Probably from Middle Dutch clompe or Middle Low German klumpe (compare German Klumpen). Cognates include Danish klump (probably from Low German as well). Compare Norwegian (bokmål) klump

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Examples

  • I like that she is using the same universe what she calls a clump of characters, but isn't sticking with the same narrator.

    I'll be you Tripp 2009

  • Mainly because an orange-pip sized cell clump is not a baby.

    Abortion Means Never Having To Say You’re Sorry | Her Bad Mother 2009

  • Before, scientists had assumed that this shattering led to the eventual dissipation of the rings, but a new simulation, created by Glen Stewart and Stuart Robbins of the University of Colorado, shows that after breaking up, the particles could again clump together in a perpetual recycling process.

    Saturn’s Rings Might Be Ancient | Disinformation 2008

  • The man in the clump is fat and bald, his chin deeply lined from mouth to jowl.

    L. Debard and Aliette 2006

  • The man in the clump is fat and bald, his chin deeply lined from mouth to jowl.

    L. Debard and Aliette 2006

  • The man in the clump is fat and bald, his chin deeply lined from mouth to jowl.

    L. Debard and Aliette 2006

  • Each clump is named after a different benefactor, and each block in each clump is distinguished by a large capital letter.

    Mrs. Miniver 1939

  • The clump is the den area, and to the right are a couple of badger kids.

    Archive 2009-06-01 Bardiac 2009

  • The clump is the den area, and to the right are a couple of badger kids.

    Bardiac's Yellowstone Adventure, part 3 Bardiac 2009

  • A team led by Jane Greaves at the University of St Andrews in Scotland reckons that the clump is a planet in its very early years of formation -– at no more than 100,000 years old, it is much younger than the previous record holder for the youngest planet, which was less than 10 million years old.

    Growing Up 520 Light Years Away - The Lede Blog - NYTimes.com 2008

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