clump

plural clumps

1. A cluster or lump; an unshaped piece or mass.
2. collectiveA thick group or bunch, especially of bushes or hair.

   clump of trees

   1954, Lucian Hobart Ryland (translator), Adelaide of Brunswick (originally by Marquis de Sade)

   1 more example

   There are suitable clumps of gorse a little way back, sir. I anticipate that you would be quite safe there, or I would not suggest it, sir.

   1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries

3. collectiveA small group of trees or other plants growing together.
4. A dull thud.

   She [Miss Climpson] asks questions which a young man could not put without a blush. She is the angel that rushes in where fools get a clump on the head.

   1927, Dorothy L. Sayers, Unnatural Death

   1 more example

   Thus, the myths of cinema and syndicated cartoon have served to unite the diverse races far more than the clump of the cricket-ball and the clipped rebukes and laudations of their masters.

   1956, Anthony Burgess, Time for a Tiger (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 37

5. The compressed clay of coal strata.

   clump-burned bricks

   1837, The Magazine of Domestic Economy

6. historicalA thick addition to the sole of a shoe.

present singular third person clumps · participle present clumping · participle past clumped · past clumped

1. ambitransitiveTo form clusters or lumps.
2. ambitransitiveTo gather in dense groups.
3. intransitiveTo walk with heavy footfalls.
4. UKregionaltransitiveTo strike; to beat.

   There is his poor little cap hanging up on the door; and there on the table is the knife he chipped a piece out of through not minding the mark on the knife machine, and I clumped his head for him, poor lamb!

   1912, Mrs. Coulson Kernahan, The Go-Between, page 79