English

Adjective

humpy ‎(comparative humpier, superlative humpiest)

1. Characterised by humps, uneven.
   • 1907, Edith M.H Baylor, A Little Prospector, page 60,

     A very weary small boy and a weary father and mother were soon asleep in the hardest and humpiest bed ever made.

   • 1988, John Gunnell, Chevrolet Pickups, 1946-1972: How to Identify, Select and Restore Chevrolet Collector Light Trucks, Panels and El Caminos, page 19,

     The cab height was reduced, but the front fenders looked higher and humpier.

   • 2011, Steven Vogel, Comparative Biomechanics: Life's Physical World, page 255,

     The sand dollars adjust the gaps between individuals depending on flow speed, and populations from more sheltered locations consist of slightly humpier (more cambered) individuals with greater lift coefficients.

2. Muscular; hunky.
   • 2010, John Butler, Ships That Pass in the Night, page 90,

     On a Friday night, Tom went upstairs to the second-floor show bar at the club to see the final show, and decided that Oscar had really underpraised the dancers – as each one entered, he appeared to be even humpier and better-hung than the ones before.

3. Hunched, bent over.
   • 1907, P. G. Wodehouse, Herbert Westbrook, Not George Washington: An Autobiographical Novel, 2008, page 107,

     Tell you what it was just like. Reminded me of it even at the time: that picture of Napoleon coming back from Moscow. The Reverend was Napoleon, and we were the generals; and if there were three humpier men walking the streets of London at that moment I should have liked to have seen them.

4. Sulky; irritable.
   • 1996, Mark Kinkead-Weekes, D.H. Lawrence: Triumph to Exile, 1912-1922, Volume 1, page 55,

     As the rain poured down; and Frieda went on and on about the children; and Lawrence got humpier and humpier but kept asking ‘a dozen times a day in all keys, are you miserable’ (i. 534); it must have been the Christmas misery all over again.

Derived terms

• humpily
• humpiness

Etymology 2

From Yagara (Brisbane region) ŋumbi, perhaps influenced by hump.

Noun

humpy ‎(plural humpies)

1. (Australia) A hut or temporary shelter made from bark and tree branches, especially for Aborigines.
   • 1938, Xavier Herbert, Capricornia, Chapter III, p. 29,

     They did nothing much more in the way of building than to erect a number of crazy humpies of such materials as bark and kerosene-cans […]

   • 1961, Nene Gare, The Fringe Dwellers, Text Classics 2012, p. 31:

     Trilby was the first to wake, her face barred with sunlight that slipped through the inadequate walls of the humpy.

   • 1984, Maxwell John Charlesworth (editor), Religion in Aboriginal Australia: An Anthology, page 129,

     I dreamed that a boy child walked past all the other humpies [Australian white term for native huts] in the camp and kept coming until he got to my house. He beat on the bark wall.

   • 1988, Tom Cole, **** West and Crooked, 1995, Angus & Robertson, p. 257,

     There weren′t that many blacks about, but a lot of humpies – at times it must have been a fairly big camp.

   • 2003, Frank G. Clarke, Australia in a Nutshell: A Narrative History, page 215,

     Evicted men and their families lived wherever they could, and shanty towns of hessian-sack humpies grew up in Sydney′s southern suburbs on vacant crown land: the largest being at Brighton-le-Sands, Rockdale, Long Bay and La Perouse. In such camps, unemployed huddled for warmth in humpies while, closer to the city, others squatted in caves in the Domain around the local beauty spot known as Mrs Macquarie′s chair.

Synonyms

• gunyah