Lumper
noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 An extra laborer hired to assist in the loading or unloading of a truck or a ship.
"There were owners of lines of schooners, large contributors to the societies, and small men, their few craft pawned to the mastheads, with bankers and marine-insurance agents, captains of tugs and water-boats, riggers, fitters, lumpers, salters, boat-builders, and coopers, and all the mixed population of the water-front."
- 2 A lamprey. dialectal
- 3 A variety of potato, best known as the variety that failed in the Irish potato famine. countable, uncountable
"“Over there I'm growing Lumper,” he tells us as we look across potato rows growing between poplar windbreaks."
- 4 a taxonomist who classifies organisms into large groups on the basis of major characteristics wordnet
- 5 A scientist in one of various fields who prefers to keep categories such as species or dialects together in larger groups.
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- 6 a laborer who loads and unloads vessels in a port wordnet
- 7 A militiaman. dialectal
- 8 Synonym of lumpman (“type of salt worker”). historical
- 1 To lumber; to plod. archaic, intransitive
"Over piggeries, and mixens, and apples, and hay, / They lumpered straight into the night; / And finding bylong where a halter-path lay, / At dawn reached Tim's house […]"
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"There were owners of lines of schooners, large contributors to the societies, and small men, their few craft pawned to the mastheads, with bankers and marine-insurance agents, captains of tugs and water-boats, riggers, fitters, lumpers, salters, boat-builders, and coopers, and all the mixed population of the water-front."
Etymology
From lump + -er.
Related phrases
More for "lumper"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.