stump
/stʌmp
/- It shows a charred stump of a tree with the ground around it burnt.
- They found large piles of sawdust and tree stumps cut to ground level.
- Between the foc'sle store and the hold are the remnants of a mast stump, with the hole in the decking above still clearly identifiable.
- Today 27 stones remain standing along with the stumps and fragments of another nine.
- Elsewhere the remnants are more mundane and ambiguous, like a shattered stump of bone which may point to the giant moa.
Synonyms
- Only 20 runs were added in nine more overs and Inzamam's approach caused his dismissal, the ball going off bat and pad onto the stumps.
- Kiddy Cricket is a popular spectacular featured during international matches, with the youngsters engaged in games using rubber balls, plastic bats and stumps.
- Then to rub salt in the wounds, the home team took a slender five-run lead with three wickets down by stumps to set themselves up for a considerable first innings lead.
- With Border having to bowl 20 overs before the close of play, Easterns played defensively and this may have contributed to their losing four wickets by stumps.
- But even after a two-month stump campaign, the Bush plan for private Social Security accounts is sputtering.
- Lincoln's skill as a stump speaker, enhanced by his six-foot-four-inch height, contributed to his political rise.
- He has had barely a month on the campaign stump, but Wesley K. Clark is giving his fellow Presidential contenders a run for their money.
- You can go here to the bulletin board on Jeopardy and read some game recaps and see which rare questions stumped Ken.
- This innocent-sounding question has stumped mathematicians from Cantor's time to the present.
- We were sure the last question would stump them and leave us with great video footage.
Synonyms
- For example, the press agents were stumped when asked to explain the rules and legal implications of the Wi-Fi Internet waves.
- But when she got a National award for the song, they were stumped.
- Each examined him separately but they, too, were stumped.
- I jumped when I heard thunder and kids stumping and running around in the other room.
- All at once, I saw two figures: one a little man who was stumping along eastward at a good walk, and the other a girl of maybe eight or ten who was running as hard as she was able down a cross street.
- Haley walked into the kitchen and two minutes later Trevor came stumping into the kitchen.
Synonyms
- Easts wicket keeper Dale Box did well with the gloves, stumping two batsmen, one off the bowling of Jobson and another off David Wells.
- The Alice team were given good service by their wicketkeeper, V Makapela, who stumped two batsmen and caught one.
- The chief Minister, Oommen Chandy, stumped the District Collectors at their two-day annual conference here on Monday.
- Max is now stumping for his friend and fellow veteran, John Kerry.
- In the 2000 primary Wellstone also opposed Gore, stumping for candidate Bill Bradley.
Phrases
up a stump
Phrasal verbs
stump something up
Origin
Middle English (denoting a part of a limb remaining after an amputation): from Middle Low German stump(e) or Middle Dutch stomp. The early sense of the verb was 'stumble'.
One sense of stump refers to part of a limb remaining after an amputation, and this was the original meaning of the noun. The verb was initially ‘to stumble over an obstacle’, especially over a tree stump. The sense ‘to baffle’, was first used in American English in the early 19th century and probably arose from the idea of coming across stumps in ploughing which obstruct the progress of the plough. The Australian phrase beyond the black stump means ‘beyond the limits of settled, and therefore civilized, life’. It comes from the custom of using a fire-blackened stump of wood as a marker when giving directions to travellers. To be on the stump is to go about the country making political speeches, a usage that originated in rural America in the late 18th century, when a person making a speech would often use a tree stump as an impromptu platform. The Democratic politician Adlai Stevenson said of Richard Nixon that he was ‘the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, and then mount the stump, and make a speech on conservation’. To stump up a tree is to dig it up by the roots. This gives the meaning ‘to pay up, especially reluctantly’, from the image of digging deep into your pocket.