Humpty

Part of speech: adjective, noun

Definitions

1. Something having a bulging or rounded form, like a hump or dome
2. An object or figure with a prominent curved or convex surface
3. Anything characterized by a lumpy, bumpy, or swollen appearance

Etymology: Before it described a fallen egg, "humpty dumpty" was an insult for a squat, stubby person. Francis Grose's 1785 dictionary of slang lists it that way, and the wording is a pair of rhyming descriptors. "Dumpty" comes from "dumpy," meaning short and thick, and "humpty" suggests a hump or a rounded lump. English loves this kind of reduplicated pairing, as in "helter-skelter" and "hurly-burly," where the sound carries the meaning. The egg did not arrive until the nineteenth century. A riddle in a children's rhyme book from around 1810 described a character called Humpty Dumpty with no clear body shape, and its answer was an egg. Lewis Carroll's 1871 "Through the Looking-Glass" then fixed the image in readers' minds by showing him as an egg-shaped figure on a wall. The picture was Carroll's, and the egg was not in the original insult.