Word.ws English Dictionary

clumb

/ˈklʌm/

clumb is the simple past of climb.

clumb is the alternative past participle of climb.

Meaning of climb

Verb

climb (third-person singular simple present climbs, present participle climbing, simple past climbed or (archaic) clomb, past participle climbed or (archaic) clomb or (archaic) clumb)

  1. (intransitive) To traverse a slope or contour, either upwards (ascending) or downwards (descending).
    • after I had found (the goats') haunts a little, I laid wait in this manner for them: I observed if they saw me in the valleys, though they were upon the rocks, they would run away, as in a terrible fright; but if they were feeding in the valleys, and I was upon the rocks, they took no notice of me...1719, Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe Chapter 4
  2. (intransitive) (literally or figuratively): To ascend; rise; to go up.
    • Black vapours climb aloft, and cloud the day.1697, Virgil, “The Seventh Book of the Æneis”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC
    1. (intransitive) To ascend in a non-physical or figurative sense.
      • The hit song has climbed to the number one spot.
    2. (figuratively, intransitive) To move to a higher position on a chart or hierarchy.
      • Prices climbed steeply.
  3. (transitive) To mount; to move upwards on.
    • climbing a tree
  4. (transitive) To scale; to get to the top of something.
    • He is a curly-haired schoolboy barely in his teens, but 13-year-old Jordan Romero from California has become the youngest person to climb Mount Everest.2010 May 22, David Harrison, “American boy, 13, is youngest person to climb Everest”, in Daily Telegraph online
    Synonyms:
    scale

See all 14 meanings of climb

Origin of clumb

From Middle English clumben, from Old English clumbon (“climbed”), plural past tense of climban (“to climb”). More at climb, clomb.

From Middle English clumben, yclumben, from Middle English ġeclumben (“climbed”), past participle of climban (“to climb”).

Words that rhyme with clumb

42 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about clumb

What is clumb the simple past of?
Clumb is the simple past of climb.
How do you pronounce clumb?
Clumb is pronounced /ˈklʌm/.

Words near clumb in the dictionary

  1. Clukey
  2. Clukeys
  3. Cluley
  4. Clulow
  5. Clum
  6. clumb
  7. clumber
  8. clumber spaniel
  9. Clumber spaniels
  10. Clumbers
  11. clump

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: clumb (page history and authors); climb (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.

Last updated:

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