humpback

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English

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Ceramic figure by 17th century French artist Jacques Callot of a clown with a humpback

Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From hump +‎ back.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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humpback (plural humpbacks)

  1. A humped back (deformity in humans caused by abnormal curvature of the upper spine).
    • 1691, John Dunton, chapter 6, in A Voyage Round the World‎[1], London: Richard Newcome, page 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 October 1, Richard Steele, “The Lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff Esq.”, in The Tatler‎[2], volume 2, number 75, London, published 1712, page 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 December 31 (indicated as 1818), [Walter Scott], chapter [XI], in Rob Roy. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC, page 272:
      Diana Vernon, the most beautiful creature I ever beheld, in love with him, the bandy-legged, bull-necked, limping scoundrel!—Richard the Third in all but his hump-back!
    • 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 63, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC:
      […] 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, chapter 5, in Behind the Curtain‎[3], Toronto: The Ryerson Press:
      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, Somerset Maugham, chapter 16, in Mrs Craddock‎[4], London: Heinemann, published 1955, page 157:
        […] the cows stood about with gloomy eyes and hump-backs, surly and dangerous […]
      • 1969, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, “Immersion in Life”, in Earth Shine‎[5], New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, page 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 Oatman Girls, San Francisco: [for the author], Chapter 4, p. 134,[6]
        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[7], 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, chapter 38, in The Resurrectionists‎[8], Penguin, published 2006, page 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[9], 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[10], Penguin, published 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.

Derived terms

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Translations

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See also

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Verb

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humpback (third-person singular simple present humpbacks, present participle humpbacking, simple past and past participle humpbacked)

  1. To hunt humpback whales.
    • 1895, Charles Nordhoff, chapter 10, in Whaling and Fishing‎[11], New York: Dodd, Mead, page 191:
      The captain of the James Rodgers […] was an old hand at humpbacking […]
    • 1953, Emma Mayhew Whiting, Henry Beetle Hough, chapter 16, in Whaling Wives‎[12], Boston: Houghton Mifflin, page 240:
      […] the Alice Knowles […] did her whaling in the south Atlantic, by turns humpbacking off the African coast and cruising around Tristan in season.

Translations

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