slump

present singular third person slumps · participle present slumping · participle past slumped · past slumped

1. intransitiveTo collapse heavily or helplessly.

   Exhausted, he slumped down onto the sofa.

   1 more example

   “Heavens!” exclaimed Nina, “the blue-stocking and the fogy!—and yours are pale blue, Eileen!—you’re about as self-conscious as Drina—slumping there with your hair tumbling à la Mérode! Oh, it's very picturesque, of course, but a straight spine and good grooming is better.[…]”

   1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter IX, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC

   Synonyms: plump

2. intransitiveTo decline or fall off in activity or performance.

   Real estate prices slumped during the recession.

   2 more examples

   The Gunners captain demonstrated his importance to the team by taking his tally to an outstanding 28 goals in 27 Premier League games as Chelsea slumped again after their shock defeat at QPR last week.

   2011 October 29, Phil McNulty, “Chelsea 3-5 Arsenal”, in BBC Sport

   But in the week ending December 6, usage slumped from 72% of pre-pandemic numbers to just 56%, following revised advice that we should work from home again.

   2021 December 29, Nigel Harris, “Comment: Problems galore in 2021...”, in RAIL, number 947, page 3

3. intransitiveTo slouch or droop.

   “Isaac Sachs’s tragic flaw, ” analyzes Isaac Sachs, slumped in the bay window across from Luisa Rey two hours later, “is this. Too cowardly to be a warrior, but not enough of a coward to lie down and roll over like a good doggy.”

   2004, David Mitchell, “Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery”, in Cloud Atlas, →ISBN, page 131

4. transitiveTo lump; to throw together messily.

   These different groups[…]are exclusively slumped together under that sense.

   a. 1857, William Hamilton, edited by H[enry] L[ongueville] Mansel and John Veitch, Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, published 1859–1860, →OCLC

5. intransitiveTo fall or sink suddenly through or in, when walking on a surface, as on thawing snow or ice, a bog, etc.

   The latter walk on a bottomless quag, into which unawares they may slump.

   a. 1678 (date written), Isaac Barrow, “(please specify the chapter name or sermon number)”, in The Works of Dr. Isaac Barrow. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to VII), London: A[braham] J[ohn] Valpy, […], published 1830–1831, →OCLC

6. slangtransitiveTo cause to collapse; to hit hard; to render unconscious; to kill.

plural slumps

1. A heavy or helpless collapse; a slouching or drooping posture; a period of poor activity or performance, especially an extended period.
   1. broadlyslangA period when a person goes without the expected amount of sex or dating.

      TOM. We haven't had sex with each other in five months. MICHAEL. We're in a slump, I know that."

      2004, Jonathan Tolins, The Last Sunday in June

2. A period of poor performance.

   If she doesn't pull out of her slump, her job may be in jeopardy.

3. A measure of the fluidity of freshly mixed concrete, based on how much the concrete formed in a standard slump cone sags when the cone is removed.
4. geographyA form of mass wasting in which a coherent mass of loosely consolidated materials or a rock layer moves a short distance down a slope.
5. broadlygeographyA crater or depression (an area where the ground slumps) which forms as a result of such wasting. (A large crater is colloquially called a megaslump.)

   The biggest slump in the world - a mega-slump - is in the Russian taiga. Known as the Batagaika crater, it is a kilometre-long gash in the ground, about 70 metres deep, and growing[…]

   2022 September 8, Mark Brownlow, Elizabeth White, Frozen Planet II, Random House, →ISBN

6. UKdialectalA boggy place.

   The road was all slumps of holes.

   1880, William Hugh Patterson, A Glossary of Words in Use in the Counties of Antrim and Down

   1 more example

   It was neither seemly nor befitting that so great an occasion should have its solemnity defaced by leaping-poles or four hands crossed cradlewise to convey the bridal finery over “slump” or “quakkin'-qua[g]”!

   1911, Samuel Rutherford Crockett, Rose of the Wilderness, page 165

7. ScotlandThe noise made by anything falling into a hole, or into a soft, miry place.
8. ScotlandThe gross amount; the mass; the lump.
9. A cobbler-like dessert cooked on a stove.

   a blackberry slump