bumping

• IPA^(key): /ˈbʌmpɪŋ/

bumping

1. present participle and gerund of bump

bumping (plural bumpings)

1. The sound or action of a bump.
   • 1941, Gladys Mitchell, When Last I Died:

     There was nothing to be seen, but he could hear loud thumpings and bumpings which seemed to come from the back of the house.

2. (physical chemistry) The violent boiling when an homogenous liquid is superheated to the point that the bubbles are formed at pressure greater than atmospheric pressure and be expelled from the container
3. Form of racing for coxed fours traditional at Oxford and Cambridge Universities; bumps race
   • 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 3, in The History of Pendennis. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC:

     He listened, and with respect too, to Mr. Foker’s accounts of what the men did at the University of which Mr. F. was an ornament, and encountered a long series of stories about boat-racing, bumping, College grass-plats, and milk-punch—and began to wish to go up himself to College to a place where there were such manly pleasures and enjoyments.