A word indicating the progress of a man in the mire; applied to the failure of a college student; and, latterly, to a heavy fall in the price of stocks. [See Notes and Queries, 4 S. xii. 413.]
1804.
| And shrubs and trees, if e’er they grew, | |
| Have lost their foothold, and slump’d through. | |
Mass. Spy, Jan. 25: from the Connecticut Courant. (The allusion is to the Louisiana purchase.) |
1847. In fact, he ’d rather dead than dig; he ’d rather slump than squirt. (Harvard)—Hall, ‘College Words,’ p. 433 (1856).
1850. Move carefully!… It is a slip, or a slump, all the way through.—S. Judd, ‘Richard Edney,’ p. 12.
