Word.ws English Dictionary

call it stumps

call it stumps verb: to decide to end an activity; to call it a day.

Verb

call it stumps (third-person singular simple present calls it stumps, present participle calling it stumps, simple past and past participle called it stumps)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To decide to end an activity; to call it a day.
    • Eventually I decided to call it stumps and the last thing he said to me as I retired to his spare room was, `So you're not going to Inskip are you?' I answered that no, he was right, I wouldn't go and he tottered off happy.2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 130

Forms of call it stumps

third-person singular presentcalls it stumps
present participlecalling it stumps
past participlecalled it stumps
pastcalled it stumps

Origin of call it stumps

A figurative use of the cricket expression stumps (“the close of play when the stumps are pulled out of the ground by the umpires”).

Questions about call it stumps

What does call it stumps mean?
Call it stumps means to decide to end an activity; to call it a day.
What part of speech is call it stumps?
Call it stumps is a verb.
What is the past tense of call it stumps?
The past tense of call it stumps is called it stumps.

Words near call it stumps in the dictionary

  1. call it as one sees it
  2. call it even
  3. call it half a day
  4. call it quits
  5. call it square
  6. call it stumps
  7. call leaf
  8. call leaves
  9. call letters
  10. call liquor
  11. call liquors

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: call it stumps (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “call it stumps.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/call_it_stumps. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.