Meaning
Feeling miserable, depressed or low in spirits, usually because of a disappointment, setback or run of bad luck. A mild, everyday expression for a temporary low mood rather than a clinical term, and often softened with 'a bit' or 'rather'. Informal and sympathetic; too mild for serious or clinical depression. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The dumps was a noun for melancholy or dejection as early as the 1520s: Etymonline records it as the plural of dumpe, a fit of musing, of uncertain origin and possibly from Dutch domp, mist or haze. The earliest printed example noted by The Phrase Finder is Sir Thomas More's 1529 Dialogue of Comfort, in which some of the family have fallen into such dumps, and Shakespeare used the word repeatedly, as in The Taming of the Shrew. The full phrase 'down in the dumps' is first recorded in Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue of 1785, glossed as low-spirited and melancholy. Grose jokingly derived it from Dumpos, a king of Egypt who died of melancholy, echoing a note attached to John Gay's verse; no such king existed, and the rival idea that dumps comes from dumpling is also false, since the melancholy sense predates the food word in English.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a bit down in the dumps
- feel down in the dumps
- in the dumps
Usage Examples
- He has been down in the dumps since the transfer fell through.
- A bowl of soup and an old film usually pull her out of the dumps.
- Don't mind me; I'm just a bit down in the dumps about the flooded garden.