Word.ws English Dictionary

galumph

/ɡəˈlʌmf/

galumph verb: to move heavily and clumsily, or with a sense of prancing and triumph.

Verb

galumph (third-person singular simple present galumphs, present participle galumphing, simple past and past participle galumphed)

  1. (intransitive) To move heavily and clumsily, or with a sense of prancing and triumph.
    • He instructed the taxi to wait and galumphed happily up.1935, Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night
    • The Wild Things are a triumph of stagecraft, and they galumph away with the show.1990, John von Rhein, The Chicago Tribune, "Wild Things Perfect Fare for Holidays", December 19, 1990
  2. (intransitive) (of a seal) To move across land by undulating the body.

Forms of galumph

third-person singular presentgalumphs
present participlegalumphing
past participlegalumphed
pastgalumphed

Origin of galumph

Back-formation from galumphing in Lewis Carroll's “Jabberwocky”.

Words formed from galumph

Questions about galumph

What does galumph mean?
Galumph means to move heavily and clumsily, or with a sense of prancing and triumph.
What part of speech is galumph?
Galumph is a verb.
How do you pronounce galumph?
Galumph is pronounced /ɡəˈlʌmf/.
What is the past tense of galumph?
The past tense of galumph is galumphed.

Words near galumph in the dictionary

  1. galtrap
  2. galtraps
  3. galtrop
  4. galtrops
  5. galuchat
  6. galumph
  7. galumphed
  8. galumpher
  9. galumphers
  10. galumphing
  11. galumphingly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: galumph (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-galumph.wav.

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