[Partly from CLUMP sb.; partly with onomatopœic modifications: cf. CLAMP.]
1. intr. To walk or tread heavily and clumsily.
[This has associations with CLUMP sb. 4, or its Du. sources. People clump with klumpen or wooden shoes.]
1665. Bunyan, Holy Citie, in Brown, Bunyan, viii. 178. It is not every clown with his clumping dirty shoes that is admitted.
c. 1825. Mrs. Cameron, Houlston Tracts, II. No. 54. 5. If I was to clump about the house in those clodhopping shoes.
1853. ‘C. Bede,’ Verdant Green, ix. Clumping with his lame leg up and down the pavement.
1862. Sala, Seven Sons, I. ix. 214. He … clumped about in his sabots.
2. trans. To put together into a ‘clump,’ heap or mass; to plant in a clump.
1824. Miss Mitford, Village, Ser. I. (1863), 26. They are paid according to the quantity they plant: and some … used to be accused of clumping them—that is … of dropping more than one bean into a hole. Ibid. (1826), Ser. II. 423. Two or three [words] were crammed into one lot, clumped, as the bean-setters say.
1869. Parkman, Disc. Gt. West, v. (1875), 63. The women … wore their hair clumped in a mass behind each ear.
3. To put a clump on the sole of a shoe, to add an extra thick sole: to ‘clog.’
Mod. To have the children’s shoes clumped for the winter.
