Word.ws English Dictionary

stumpy

/ˈstʌmpi/

stumpy adjective: like or resembling a stump; short and cut off.

Adjective

stumpy (comparative stumpier, superlative stumpiest)

  1. Like or resembling a stump; short and cut off.
    • “That’s better. Gilbert Goodie! I should have known it was you. The one-legged layabout. The uni-ped idler. The stumpy skiver. Stealing coins from a wishing well now, are we? You couldn’t make it up!”2017, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], Bad Dad, London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, →ISBN
  2. Full of stumps.
    • a stumpy forest

Noun (1)

stumpy (countable and uncountable, plural stumpies)

  1. (slang) An amputee who has lost a leg.
    • Many of the cricketers were amputees, yet they were not without resources. The "wingies" did the running for the "stumpies," and the "stumpies" did the batting for the "wingies."1976 -, Victor Cohn, Sister Kenny: The Woman Who Challenged the Doctors, →ISBN, page 63
    Synonyms:
    limby
  2. (obsolete, slang, uncountable) Money.
    • Down with the stumpy; a tizzy for a pot of half-and-half.1881, T. Lewis O. Davies, Thomas Lewis Owen Davies, A Supplementary English Glossary, page 630

Noun (2) capitalized: Stumpy

Stumpy (plural Stumpies)

  1. (abbreviation, ellipsis) Ellipsis of Australian Stumpy Tail Cattle Dog.

Examples of stumpy in a sentence

  • There are two pairs of stumpy legs and three pairs of feathery gills behind the head.
  • In her puffy parka Tara looked like an animated snowchild, herself: bubble-shaped, stumpy.
  • The drake beamed at his children and wagged his stumpy tail proudly.

All 11 example sentences with stumpy

Synonyms of stumpy

Forms of stumpy

Adjective
comparativestumpier
superlativestumpiest
Noun
pluralstumpies
pluralStumpies

Origin of stumpy

From stump + -y.

Words formed from stumpy

Phrases with stumpy

Words that rhyme with stumpy

8 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about stumpy

What does stumpy mean?
Stumpy means like or resembling a stump; short and cut off.
What part of speech is stumpy?
Stumpy can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce stumpy?
Stumpy is pronounced /ˈstʌmpi/.

Words near stumpy in the dictionary

  1. stumpsuckers
  2. stumptail
  3. stumptailed
  4. stumptails
  5. stumpwork
  6. stumpy
  7. stums
  8. stun
  9. stun grenade
  10. stun grenades
  11. stun gun

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stumpy (page history and authors); Stumpy (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-stumpy.ogg.

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