Query re "tump"

[Dennis R. Preston]

Dang Rudy, I done forgot "tump," but my folk etymology differs from
yours. I believe that when you are "tumping" some stuff out of a
container that you must be prodding the movement along with a tap on
the bottom (of the container, that is). For me, therefore, it is a
combination of "thump" and "dump," as best as I can retieve boyhood
folk etymologies.

Sime I am South Midland (through and through), the label "Chiefly
Southern" is right or wrong - depending on what "Southern" includes.

dInIs

>To those less lexically impoverished by having this verb in your
>vocabulary:
>
>         I am wondering if dictionaries are right in labeling this "chiefly
>Southern", and also if there are shades of meaning not captured in the
>definitions. I have always assumed that this was simply part of everyone's
>lexicon, until a colleague asked me about it recently and I checked a
>couple of dictionaries.
>         In asking my mother about it (now 98, from East Texas), she felt
>that it contrasted with "dump" in either the degree of inclination of a
>container, or in the size of the container, with "t" being less than "d"
>in either case (a new consonantal ablaut?). Does anyone else share this
>intuition?
>         Origins seem obscure, but let me offer my own folk-etymology: a
>combination of "tip" and "dump". It usually, but not necessarily, occurs
>with "over".
>
>         Rudy

--
Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736