Word.ws English Dictionary

tumpline

/ˈtʌmplaɪn/

tumpline noun: a strap used to carry objects tied to its ends by placing the broadened or cushioned middle of the strap over the head just above the forehead.

tumpline: a strap used to carry objects tied to its ends by placing the broadened or cushioned middle of the...
Image: Clark Wissler, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

tumpline (plural tumplines)

  1. A strap used to carry objects tied to its ends by placing the broadened or cushioned middle of the strap over the head just above the forehead.
    • The speaker slipped his arms into his pack-harness and adjusted the tumpline to his forehead preparatory to rising.1918, Rex Ellingwood Beach, chapter 2, in The Winds of Chance

Forms of tumpline

pluraltumplines
alternative formtump line

Origin of tumpline

From tump + line, "tump" is an apheresis of mattump, metump, possibly from a Penobscot descendant of Proto-Algonquian *wetempi (“head”).

Questions about tumpline

What does tumpline mean?
Tumpline means a strap used to carry objects tied to its ends by placing the broadened or cushioned middle of the strap over the head just above the forehead.
What part of speech is tumpline?
Tumpline is a noun.
How do you pronounce tumpline?
Tumpline is pronounced /ˈtʌmplaɪn/.
What is the plural of tumpline?
The plural of tumpline is tumplines.

Words near tumpline in the dictionary

  1. tumpang
  2. Tumpat
  3. tumped
  4. tumpeng
  5. tumping
  6. tumpline
  7. tumplines
  8. tumps
  9. tumpties
  10. tumpty
  11. tumpy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tumpline (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-tumpline.wav.

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