Word.ws English Dictionary

oompah

oompah is the alternative spelling of oom-pah.

Meaning of oom-pah

Noun

oom-pah (uncountable)

  1. A genre of Germanic music (especially Bavarian music) typically involving brass instruments.
  2. A bassline characteristic of such music, alternating lower and higher notes or chords on the beat, or in a mid-high-low-high sequence.
    • An oom-pah bassline:
      {\clef bass<<{\set Staff.midiInstrument=#"muted trumpet"\repeat unfold4{c8r g,r

Verb

oompah (third-person singular simple present oompahs, present participle oompahing, simple past and past participle oompahed)

  1. (transitive) To produce an oom-pah sound.
    • ...the house filled with the sounds of Mario Lanza, or oompahing tubas […]2005, Jeannette Walls, The glass castle
    • Beer foamed; champagne bottles stood at attention in silver buckets; military brass oompahed over the hill and the summer air grew heavy with jubilation […]1995, Simon Schama, Landscape and memory

Forms of oompah

Noun
pluraloompahs
Verb
third-person singular presentoompahs
present participleoompahing
past participleoompahed
pastoompahed

Questions about oompah

What does oompah mean?
Oompah means to produce an oom-pah sound.
What is oompah the alternative spelling of?
Oompah is the alternative spelling of oom-pah.
What part of speech is oompah?
Oompah is a verb.
What is the past tense of oompah?
The past tense of oompah is oompahed.

Words near oompah in the dictionary

  1. oomiaks
  2. Oommen
  3. Oommens
  4. Oompa Loompa
  5. Oompa Loompas
  6. oompah
  7. oompah-like
  8. oompahed
  9. oompahing
  10. oompahpah
  11. oompahs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: oompah (page history and authors); oom-pah (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: “oompah.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/oompah. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.