plump
/plʌmp/
plump adjective: having a full and rounded shape; chubby, somewhat overweight.
Adjective
plump (comparative plumper or more plump, superlative plumpest or most plump)
- Having a full and rounded shape; chubby, somewhat overweight.
- a plump baby; plump cheeks
- The god of wine did his plump clusters bring.1651, Thomas Carew, To my friend G. N. from Wrest
- Synonyms:
- round
- Sudden and without reservation; blunt; direct; downright.
- We are averse to plump queries, but we are going to ask our readers a plain, simple question Did you ever see a paper y'clept "The Yankee Blade?"1847, editorial staff, “The Yankee Blade”, in Scientific American, series 1, Volume 3, Issue 9, page 66
- After the plump statement that the author was at Erceldoune and spake with Thomas.1898, George Saintsbury, “XXXVII The Dullards That Men Are”, in A Short History of English Literature
- Of a wine: giving the sensation of filling the mouth.
- A plump wine, with an abundance of plum and berry characteristics and soft, round tannins. Easy to drink; ready on release.1992, The Wine Spectator, volume 17, page 33
Verb (1)
plump (third-person singular simple present plumps, present participle plumping, simple past and past participle plumped)
- To grow plump; to swell out.
- Her cheeks have plumped.
- To make plump; to fill (out) or support; often with up.
- to plump oysters or scallops by placing them in fresh or brackish water
- to plump up the hollowness of their history with improbable miracles1655, Thomas Fuller, The Church-history of Britain; […], London: […] Iohn Williams […], →OCLC, (please specify |book=I to XI)
- To give a plumper (kind of vote).
- To give (a vote), as a plumper.
- To favor or decide in favor of.
- A recent poll by the New York Times found that although most Brazilians plump for arch-rival Argentina as the team they most want to lose, the second-biggest group want Brazil itself to stumble.2014, “Brazil in a nutshell”, in The Economist
Verb (2)
plump (third-person singular simple present plumps, present participle plumping, simple past and past participle plumped)
Adverb
plump
- Directly; suddenly; perpendicularly.
- I suppose then, that going plump on a flying whale with your sail set in a foggy squall is the height of a whaleman’s discretion?1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 49, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 253
Noun (1)
plump (plural plumps)
- The sound of a sudden heavy fall.
- As she beheld her, poor Mrs. Mack's heart fluttered up to her mouth, and then dropped with a dreadful plump, into the pit of her stomach.1863, Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard
Noun (2)
plump (plural plumps)
- A knot or cluster; a group; a crowd.
- a plump of trees, fowls, or spears
- To visit islands and the plumps of men.1614–1615, Homer, “(please specify the book number)”, in Geo[rge] Chapman, transl., Homer’s Odysses. […], London: […] Rich[ard] Field [and William Jaggard], for Nathaniell Butter, published 1615...
- A group of ducks or geese migrating, or sometimes other groups of birds.
- What Descartes called res cogitans is not a defined res but a network, a swarm, a cloud, much like a plump of geese flying south or ants foraging around their woodlands.2022, Martin Kornberger, Strategies for Distributed and Collective Action: Connecting the Dots, Oxford University Press, page 100
- A great example of professionalism in aviation: on the afternoon of January 15, 2009, in the middle of wintertime, a big plump of geese were flying south, getting off of the strong cold weather.2020, Jaime Fernandez, The Fascinating World of Aviation, Page Publishing
Proper noun capitalized: Plump
Plump (plural Plumps)
- A surname from German.
plump meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
plump in Hindi
- Having a full and rounded shape, chubby
- गुदगुदा gudgudā
plump in Tamil
- தளதளப்பான, தளதளத்த, உருண்டு திரண்ட, குண்டான, கொழுத்த, தடித்த
plump in Marathi
- plump
- गुबगुबीत gubgubīt
plump in Urdu
- فربہ, موٹا
More languagesFewer languages
- plump in Bengali
- মোটা
- plump in Telugu
- బలిసిన balisina
- plump in Malayalam
- തടിച്ച, പുഷ്ടിയുള്ള, സരളമായ, മാംസളമായ
- plump in Kannada
- ಥಟ್ಟನೆ ಬೀಳು, ದೊಪ್ಪನೆ ಬೀಳು, ದುಂಡುದುಂಡಾಗಿರುವ, ಮೈ ತುಂಬಿಕೊಂಡಿರುವ
- plump in Odia
- ତିଆରି tiāri
- plump in Assamese
- গোল gül
- plump in Arabic
- سمين
- plump in Persian
- تپل topol
- plump in Thai
- ท้วม túuam, อวบ ùuap
Examples of plump in a sentence
- My ideal is to be idle and to love a plump girl.2015, Anton Chekhov, The Life and Genius of Anton Chekhov: Letters, Diary, Reminiscences and Biography: Assorted Collection of...
- He was a plump little man and we had been walking uphill at a pace—set by him—far too rapid for his short legs.1956, Delano Ames, chapter 23, in Crime out of Mind:
- A "plump" of ducks rose at the same time and took the route to the north in the wake of their noisier cousins1893, Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Or, Life in the Woods, Houghton Miffler, page 483:
Synonyms of plump
Forms of plump
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | plumper |
| comparative | more plump |
| superlative | plumpest |
| superlative | most plump |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | plumps |
| present participle | plumping |
| past participle | plumped |
| past | plumped |
| Noun | |
| plural | plumps |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Plumps |
Origin of plump
From Middle English plump, plompe, a borrowing from Middle Dutch plomp or Middle Low German plump. Cognate with Saterland Frisian plump (“plump”).
From Middle English plumpen, akin to Middle Dutch plompen, Middle Low German plumpen, German plumpsen.
Inherited from Middle English plump.
Words formed from plump
Words that rhyme with plump
18 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about plump
- What does plump mean?
- Plump means having a full and rounded shape; chubby, somewhat overweight.
- What is plump in Hindi?
- Plump in Hindi is गुदगुदा (gudgudā). See Plump meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use plump in a sentence?
- My ideal is to be idle and to love a plump girl.
- What part of speech is plump?
- Plump can be an adjective, a verb, an adverb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce plump?
- Plump is pronounced /plʌmp/.
Words near plump in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: plump (page history and authors); Plump (page history and authors); plump (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); गुबगुबीत (Marathi) (page history and authors); plump (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); plump (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); plump (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); plump (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ତିଆରି (Odia) (page history and authors); গোল (Assamese) (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-plump.wav.
Cite this entry: “plump.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/plump. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.