Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall;
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.
an egg-shaped character in a Mother Goose nursery rhyme that fell off a wall and could not be put together again.
(sometimes lowercase) something that has been damaged severely and usually irreparably.
a short fat person
a person or thing that once overthrown or broken cannot be restored or mended
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
In 1871 Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty told Alice: “When I use a word, it means whatever I choose it to mean.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 15, 2025
Back in 1842, the now defunct Punch magazine alluded to Humpty Dumpty being based on Wolsey, who was once Henry VIII's chief adviser before being suspected of treason.
From BBC ● Apr. 19, 2024
Humpty Dumpty is an apt analogy here: It’s easier to prevent his great fall than to put him together again after he’s broken.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 11, 2023
In dribs and drabs over the next 16 years, a remarkable pattern emerged — a Humpty Dumpty story with a happier ending.
From New York Times ● Apr. 19, 2023
Didn't they all believe—those who had actually read Alice and not just said they had—that Humpty Dumpty came from Wonderland?
From "The View From Saturday" by E.L. Konigsburg
One critic of Green Bay CC has seized upon all its humpty dumpty mounds that surround several greens, but to me, they're simply smaller imitations of the broader kettle moraine topography found on that site.
From Golf Digest ● Jan. 9, 2018
Putting the climate humpty dumpty back together has involved understanding exactly what went on in Copenhagen, and attempting to do the opposite.
From BBC ● Oct. 23, 2015
But, as Boehner also said on Fox on Sunday, it is “hard to put humpty dumpty back together again.”
From Time ● Jul. 26, 2011
In 1996, when he was top scorer, he played a gem of an innings on a spiteful Eden Gardens pitch before everyone else went humpty dumpty in the semi-final.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 23, 2010
A little humpty dumpty man or woman; a short clumsy person of either sex: also ale boiled with brandy.
From 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Grose, Francis
Johnson ascribes a “Humpty Dumpty” quality to his series of “Broken Men” mosaics, which he began in 2018.
From New York Times ● Sep. 23, 2021
When Mr. Pence was a toddler, overshadowed by talkative older brothers, his grandfather taught him to recite “Humpty Dumpty” in Gaelic.
From New York Times ● Mar. 16, 2017
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
