Query re "tump"

[Beverly Flanigan]

Could it be related to "tamp," as in "tamp down"?  Though the word is
unfamiliar to me, this somehow makes more sense than a blend of 'thump' and
'dump'.

At 08:00 AM 11/26/01 -0500, you wrote:
>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


_____________________________________________
Beverly Olson Flanigan         Department of Linguistics
Ohio University                     Athens, OH  45701
Ph.: (740) 593-4568              Fax: (740) 593-2967
http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/linguistics/dept/flanigan.htm