Word
Of
The
Day
galumph
galumph \guh-LUMF\
verb
To galumph is to move in a loud and clumsy way.
// I could hear them
galumphing around in the attic in search of old family photo albums.
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Examples:
“Dragons! Dragons roaring! Dragons squawking! Dragons sizing each other up! Dragons
galumphing over the sand so awkwardly it reminds you that dragons are creatures of the air, not the earth.” — Glen Weldon,
NPR, 28 July 2024
Did you know?
Bump, thump, thud. There’s no doubt about it—when someone or something galumphs onto the scene, ears take notice.
Galumph first lumbered onto the English scene in 1872 when
Lewis Carroll used the word to describe the actions of the vanquisher of the Jabberwock in
Through the Looking Glass: “He left it dead, and with its head / He went galumphing back.” Carroll likely constructed the word by splicing
gallop and
triumphant, as
galumph did in its earliest uses convey a sense of exultant bounding. Other 19th-century writers must have liked the sound of
galumph, because they began plying it in their own prose, and it has been
clumping around our language ever since.