dump
noun · verb
Simple meaning
A place where waste or garbage is left.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
duhmpIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈdʌmp
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A place where waste or garbage is left; a ground or place for dumping ashes, refuse, etc.; a disposal site.
A place where supplies can be stored
usually in the plural
A sad, gloomy state of the mind; sadness; melancholy; despondency.
That which is dumped, especially in a chaotic way; a mess.
A coarse term for defecation
Absence of mind; reverie.
verb
transitive
To sell below cost or very cheaply; to engage in dumping.
transitive
To release, especially in large quantities and chaotic manner.
transitive
To put or throw down with more or less of violence; hence, to unload from a cart by tilting it
transitiveus
To precipitate (especially snow) heavily.
transitiveAustralia
Of a surf wave, to crash a swimmer, surfer, etc., heavily downwards.
Knock down with force
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A place where waste or garbage is left; a ground or place for dumping ashes, refuse, etc.; a disposal site.
Used this way, dump is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use dump
- “The company dumped him after many years of service.”verb
- “The truck dumped the garbage in the street.”verb
- “No dumping in these woods!”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
An informal expression for a mildly depressed state.
Selling goods abroad at a price below that charged in the domestic market.
Truck whose contents can be emptied without handling.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Truck whose contents can be emptied without handling.
A routine that writes from an internal store to some external medium.
An illegal scheme for making money by manipulating stock prices.
A piece of land where waste materials are dumped.
A location where toxic wastes can be or have been disposed of (often illegally).
A tariff imposed to prevent dumping.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
A container designed to receive and transport and dump waste.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- campgroundnoun
- trashnoun
- sewagenoun
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.