English
humpback
Noun

humpback (plural humpbacks)

  1. A humped back deformity in humans caused by abnormal curvature of the upper spine.
    • 1691, John Dunton, A Voyage Round the World, London: Richard Newcome, Chapter 6, p. 122,
      […] the Stone in my Fathers Body was so immense, that I’ve wonder’d it did not bunch up behind, and make him have a Hump-back, or at least overpoise him in walking, and drag him backward with its incredible weight.
    • 1709, Richard Steele, Tatler (1709 journal), No. 75, 1 October, 1709 in The Lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff Esq., London, 1712, Volume 2, p. 166,
      In the Male Line, there happened an unlucky Accident in the Reign of Richard the Third; the eldest Son of Philip, then Chief of the Family, being born with an Hump-back and very high Nose.
    • 1817, Walter Scott, Rob Roy (novel), Chapter 11,
      Diana Vernon, the most beautiful creature I ever beheld, in love with him, the bandy-legged, bull-necked, limping scoundrel! Richard III (play) in all but his hump-back!
    • 1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair (novel), Chapter 63,
      […] Mr. Jos had the honour of leading out the Countess of Schlusselback, an old lady with a hump back, but with sixteen good quarters of nobility and related to half the royal houses of Germany.
    • 1948, Philip Gibbs, Behind the Curtain, Toronto: The Ryerson Press, Chapter 5,
      He saw Dmitri half rise from his chair so that the shadow of his humpback shifted on the whitewashed wall.
    1. (by extension) A hump or protuberance on the shoulders or back of an animal.
      • 1902, William Somerset Maugham, Mrs Craddock, London: Heinemann, 1955, Chapter 16, p. 157,
        […] the cows stood about with gloomy eyes and hump-backs, surly and dangerous […]
      • 1969, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Earth Shine, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, “Immersion in Life,” p. 52,
        On the bare hills one begins to see unfamiliar silhouettes of animals against the sky. […] the peaked humpbacks of gnu on a ridge […]
    2. (figurative) A rounded topographical feature, such as a mountain or hill.
      • 1858, Royal B. Stratton, Captivity of the Olive Oatman, San Francisco: [for the author], Chapter 4, p. 134,
        On either side were the high, irregularly sloped mountains, with their foot hills robed in the same bright green as the valley, and with their bald hump-backs and sharp peaks, treeless, verdureless, and desolate […]
      • 1968, Barry England, Figures in a Landscape, New York: Random House, Part 1, p. 78,
        The Goons kept appearing and disappearing in different places, always closer to them, as they worked their way over the humpback of the terrain.
      • 2002, Michael Collins (Irish author), The Resurrectionists, Penguin, 2006, Chapter 38, p. 286,
        I could see clear out to the humpbacks of small islands along the great lake, where small banks of fog hung.
  2. (derogatory, now, offensive) A person with a humpback; a person who suffers from kyphosis.
    Synonyms: crookback, hunchback
    • 1860, George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, Book 2, Chapter 6,
      […] Tom’s more specific and kindly impressions gradually melted into the old background of suspicion and dislike toward him as a queer fellow, a humpback, and the son of a rogue.
    • 1951, Graham Greene, The End of the Affair, Penguin, 1975, Book 2, Chapter 7, p. 81,
      […] I stared up at the raw spots on his cheek and thought, there is no safety anywhere: a humpback, a cripple—they all have the trigger that sets love off.
  3. A humpback whale.
  4. A humpback salmon.
Related terms Translations Translations Verb

humpback (humpbacks, present participle humpbacking; past and past participle humpbacked)

  1. To hunt humpback whales.
    • 1895, Charles Nordhoff, Whaling and Fishing, New York: Dodd, Mead, Chapter 10, p. 191,
      The captain of the James Rodgers […] was an old hand at humpbacking […]
    • 1953, Emma Mayhew Whiting and Henry Beetle Hough, Whaling Wives, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Chapter 16, p. 240,
      […] the Alice Knowles […] did her whaling in the south Atlantic, by turns humpbacking off the African coast and cruising around Tristan da Cunha in season.


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