Definitions

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

  • noun An inclined surface or roadway connecting different levels.
  • noun A mobile staircase by which passengers board and leave an aircraft.
  • noun A concave bend of a handrail where a sharp change in level or direction occurs, as at a stair landing.
  • intransitive verb To rush around or act in a threatening or violent manner.
  • intransitive verb To assume a threatening stance, as in rearing up on hindlegs.
  • intransitive verb Heraldry To stand in the rampant position.
  • noun A plant (Allium tricoccum) of the eastern United States having small bulbs and young leaves that are edible and have a pungent onionlike flavor.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In architecture, to ascend or descend from one level to another: said of a wall.
  • To be greedy, and noisy; to rampage.
  • Mil., to make ramps on, as a bank or wall; furnish with ramps.
  • Ramping; leaping; furiously swift or rushing.
  • noun An inclined traveling platform or carrier for transferring freight from a boat to a dock or warehouse.
  • To rise by climbing or shooting up, as a plant; run or grow up rapidly; spring up in growth.
  • To rise for a leap or in leaping, as a wild beast; rear or spring up; prepare for or make a spring; jump violently. See rampant.
  • To move with violent leaps or starts; jump or dash about; hence, to act passionately or violently; rage; storm; behave with insolence.
  • To spring about or along gaily; frolic; gambol; flirt; romp. See romp.
  • To hustle; rob with violence.
  • To bend upward, as a piece of iron, to adapt it to the woodwork of a gate or the like.
  • noun A leap; a spring; a bound.
  • noun A rising passage or road; specifically (military), a gradual slope or ascent from the interior level of a fortification to the general level behind the parapet.
  • noun In masonry and carpentry, a concave bend or slope in the cap or upper member of any piece of ascending or descending workmanship, as in the coping of a wall; the concave sweep that connects the higher and lower parts of a railing at a half- or quarter-pace.
  • noun In architecture, etc., any slope or inclined plane, particularly an inclined plane affording communication between a higher and a lower level.
  • noun A coarse, frolicsome woman; a jade; a romp.
  • noun The garden rampion, or its root.
  • noun A highwayman; a robber.
  • noun In the game of pin-pool, a stroke by which all the pins but the center one are knocked down. A player making a ramp at any stage of the game wins the pool.

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

  • noun A leap; a spring; a hostile advance.
  • noun Prov. Eng. A highwayman; a robber.
  • noun obsolete A romping woman; a prostitute.
  • noun Any sloping member, other than a purely constructional one, such as a continuous parapet to a staircase.
  • noun A short bend, slope, or curve, where a hand rail or cap changes its direction.
  • noun (Fort.) An inclined plane serving as a communication between different interior levels.
  • intransitive verb To spring; to leap; to bound; to rear; to prance; to become rampant; hence, to frolic; to romp.
  • intransitive verb To move by leaps, or as by leaps; hence, to move swiftly or with violence.
  • intransitive verb To climb, as a plant; to creep up.

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

  • noun An American plant, Allium tricoccum, related to the onion; a wild leek.
  • noun Appalachia A promiscuous man or woman; a general insult for a worthless person.
  • noun An inclined surface that connects two levels; an incline.
  • noun aviation A mobile staircase that is attached to the doors of an airliner at an airport.
  • noun skating A construction used to do skating tricks, usually in the form of part of a pipe.
  • verb To behave violently; to rage.
  • verb To stand in a rampant position.
  • verb intransitive To change value, often at a steady rate

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

  • verb creep up -- used especially of plants
  • noun an inclined surface connecting two levels
  • verb stand with arms or forelegs raised, as if menacing
  • verb furnish with a ramp

Etymologies

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

[French rampe, from ramper, to slope, rise up, from Old French; see ramp.]

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

[Middle English rampen, from Old French ramper, to rear, rise up, of Germanic origin.]

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

[Variant of rams, from Middle English ramse, from Old English hramsa.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

See ramson

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French rampe, back-formation of Old French ramper, from Frankish *rampon ("to contract oneself"), akin to Old High German rimpfan (German rümpfen ("to wrinkle up")). Compare Danish rimpe ("to fold" (archaic), "to baste"), Icelandic rimpa.

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Examples

Comments

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  • I suppose WordNet 1 is getting at the verb from which rampage is derived but I've never heard it.

    September 13, 2008

  • "There was hardly a soul in the firm who was not perfectly well aware that publicity—advertising—is the dirtiest ramp that capitalism has yet produced." - - George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying

    March 4, 2018

  • Music with no lyrics that a DJ can talk over, either to introduce a song or advertise something.

    March 5, 2018