Tumps

Part of speech: noun, verb

Definitions

1. Small mounds or heaps of earth or other material often found in gardens or fields ; a colloquial term for small hills or raised areas of land ; minor elevations or lumps on a surface, sometimes used metaphorically to describe small obstacles or irregularities
2. Deposits or clusters of soil or natural material protruding slightly from the ground ; informal reference to small rounded elevations in a landscape ; slight raised lumps that can be natural or man-made on various surfaces
3. Little rises or accumulations, typically of earth or debris ; a casual expression for small hillocks or bumps ; small protuberances or uneven parts found in terrain or on objects

Etymology: "Tumps" is the plural of "tump", and the noun's origins are genuinely uncertain. Its most surprising candidate is an American Indian source: the word may be an apheresis (a clipped form) of "mattump" or "metump", which may come from a Penobscot descendant of the Proto-Algonquian reconstruction "wetempi", meaning "head". How a word for "head" became a word for a hillock is not explained by the sources, so that link remains a hypothesis rather than a settled path. Other proposals point closer to home. The word may be a shortening of "tumpoke", or a blend of "tip" and "dump", both suggesting a heap of loose material. A comparison is also drawn with Welsh "twmp" and "twm", meaning a mound or hillock, and with the Sicilian "timpa", which carries a similar sense of a rise or peak. Taken together, these hints point to a sense of a rounded lump or heap of earth, which fits the way the word is used in gardens and fields today.

Synonyms: mounds, hills, knolls, rises, heaps

Antonyms: depressions, valleys, pits, holes, trenches