Word.ws English Dictionary

royal bumps

royal bumps noun: a ritual of two or more persons holding another person by the arms and legs, face up, while bumping them repeatedly on the floor. In modern times it is a lighthearted affair, generally performed only on a young person's birthday with the number of bumps corresponding to the person's age in years. Historically it was a hazing.

Noun

royal bumps pl (plural only)

  1. (colloquial, idiomatic, plural, plural-only) A ritual of two or more persons holding another person by the arms and legs, face up, while bumping them repeatedly on the floor. In modern times it is a lighthearted affair, generally performed only on a young person's birthday with the number of bumps corresponding to the person's age in years. Historically it was a hazing.
    • I didn't tell the girls it was my birthday. First thing they always did was grab the poor victim's arms and legs and give her the royal bumps.1975, Bess Kaplan, The empty chair, page 43

Questions about royal bumps

What does royal bumps mean?
Royal bumps means a ritual of two or more persons holding another person by the arms and legs, face up, while bumping them repeatedly on the floor. In modern times it is a lighthearted affair, generally performed only on a young person's birthday with the number of bumps corresponding to the person's age in years. Historically it was a hazing.
What part of speech is royal bumps?
Royal bumps is a noun.

Words near royal bumps in the dictionary

  1. Royal Bencher
  2. royal blue
  3. royal blues
  4. royal borough
  5. royal boroughs
  6. royal bumps
  7. royal burgh
  8. royal burghs
  9. royal cashmere
  10. royal casino
  11. royal chinchilla

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: royal bumps (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: En-au-royal bumps.ogg.

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