thump

Probably imitative.

• IPA^(key): /θʌmp/
• Rhymes: -ʌmp

thump (plural thumps)

1. A blow that produces a muffled sound.
   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 1:

     ... and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be content.

   • Tatler

     The watchman gave so great a thump at my door, that I awaked at the knock.

2. The sound of such a blow; a thud.
3. (dated, colloquial, euphemistic) Used to replace the vulgar or blasphemous element in "what the hell" and similar phrases.

   Where the thump have you been?!

thump (third-person singular simple present thumps, present participle thumping, simple past and past participle thumped)

1. (transitive) To hit (someone or something) as if to make a thump.
   • William Shakespeare

     These bastard Bretons, whom our fathers / Have in their own land beaten, bobb'd, and thump'd.

   • 2011 January 19, Jonathan Stevenson, “Leeds 1-3 Arsenal”, in BBC:

     Kasper Schmeichel brilliantly denied Marouane Chamakh before Bacary Sagna thumped home a second, though Bradley Johnson's screamer halved the deficit.

2. (transitive) To cause to make a thumping sound.

   The cat thumped its tail in irritation.

3. (intransitive) To thud or pound.
4. (intransitive) To throb with a muffled rhythmic sound.
   • 2013 June 29, “Travels and travails”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8842, page 55:

     Even without hovering drones, a lurking assassin, a thumping score and a denouement, the real-life story of Edward Snowden, a rogue spy on the run, could be straight out of the cinema. But, as with Hollywood, the subplots and exotic locations may distract from the real message: America’s discomfort and its foes’ glee.

   Dance music thumped from the nightclub entrance.