A fun individualist vs. collectivist proverb comparison for your amusement:

Western proverb: “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.”

Eastern proverb: “The quacking duck gets shot.”

A silly midwife saying:

“Let’s make like a baby and slip on outta here!”

Intrigued that 3 words all meaning essentially “a raised area of something” rhymed so perfectly, I thought maybe “ump” was a morpheme, so I looked up the etymology for “lumps,” “humps,” and “bumps.” Yes, this was unfortunately inspired by the truly terrible song “My Humps,” but nevermind that–here you go:

lump (n.) c.1300, lumpe, perhaps from a Scandinavian source (cf. cognate Dan. lumpe, 16c.), of unknown origin. Phrase lump in (one’s) throat “feeling of tightness brought on by emotion” is from 1803. Lumps “hard knocks, a beating” is colloquial, from 1935.

hump 1681 (in hump-backed), from Du. homp “lump,” from M.L.G. hump “bump,” from P.Gmc. *khump-. Replaced, or perhaps influenced by, O.E. crump. A meaning attested from 1901 is “mound in a railway yard over which cars must be pushed,” which may be behind the fig. sense of “critical point of an undertaking” (1914). The verb meaning “to do the sex act with” is attested from 1785, but the source of this indicates it is an older word. Humpback whale is from 1725.

bump 1611, perhaps Scand., probably echoic, original sense was “hitting” then of “swelling from being hit.” Also has a long association with obs. bum “to make a booming noise,” which influenced surviving senses like bumper crop, for something full to the brim. Bumpers first recorded 1839, on railroad cars; 1926 on automobiles. To bump into “meet” is from 1880s; to bump off “kill” is 1908 in underworld slang.

So OK, no morphemes there, just the common possibly Scandinavian background. I guess all those mountains, lakes, flatlands and fjords made them really aware of ups and downs? I like to think it’s more likely that the English found the sound “ump” funnier than the Latin, German and Celtic terms for the same things and over time adopted lumps, bumps and humps for humor’s sake, but probably I’m only humoring myself with that theory!

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 15th, 2007 at 2:11 pm and is filed under culture, language/symbols/meaning, obsessions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.