chump

Compare Icelandic kumbr (“a chopping”), English chop.

• IPA^(key): /tʃʌmp/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌmp

chump (plural chumps)

1. (colloquial, derogatory) An incompetent person, a blockhead; a loser.

   That chump wouldn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.

2. A gullible person; a sucker; someone easily taken advantage of; someone lacking common sense.

   It shouldn't be hard to put one over on that chump.

   • 2012 August 5, Nathan Rabin, “TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “I Love Lisa” (season 4, episode 15; originally aired 02/11/1993)”, in AV Club‎:

     Ralph Wiggum is generally employed as a bottomless fount of glorious non sequiturs, but in “I Love Lisa” he stands in for every oblivious chump who ever deluded himself into thinking that with persistence, determination, and a pure heart he can win the girl of his dreams.

3. The thick end, especially of a piece of wood or of a joint of meat.
   • 1861, Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, Chapter X:

     Shaped as if they had been unskilfully cut off the chump-end of something.

• (an unintelligent person): blockhead, idiot, dope, dolt, dunce, dummy
• (a gullible person): gull, sucker, dupe, sap, dummy, patsy, pigeon
• See also Thesaurus:dupe

• chump change
• chump chop
• off one's chump

chump (third-person singular simple present chumps, present participle chumping, simple past and past participle chumped)

1. Dated form of chomp.
   • 1922, Arthur Machen, The Secret Glory

     At a neighbouring table two Germans were making a hearty meal, chumping the meat and smacking their lips in a kind of heavy ecstasy.