Humpty Dumpty
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.
Origin of Humpty Dumpty
1Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
How to use Humpty Dumpty in a sentence
A word, Humpty Dumpty told Alice, means whatever I want it to mean.
Near that was another poster marked “read-a-rhyme” and featuring Humpty Dumpty.
I was seven the first time my mother mailed one of my stories to a magazine (Humpty Dumpty, now defunct).
Mother’s Day 2013: Gloria Steinem, Erica Jong & Writers Thank Their Moms | Gloria Steinem, Erica Jong, Fay Weldon, Dalma Heyn, Joyce Maynard | May 12, 2013 | THE DAILY BEASTThe Obama team has been working closely with Riyadh to try to put the Yemeni Humpty-Dumpty back together.
As Humpty Dumpty once said, per Lewis Carroll: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.”
"Humpty-Dumpty," cried others; and there was a famous uproar.
Christmas Stories And Legends | VariousHumpty-Dumpty fell downstairs, and yet he married a princess.
Christmas Stories And Legends | VariousThe riddle-rhyme of "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall" is, in one form or other, a favorite throughout Europe.
Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales | David Goodger (goodger@python.org)The word Humpty-Dumpty is allied to hump and to dump, words which express roundness and shortness.
Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes | Lina EckensteinThe meaning of shortness and roundness is expressed also by the name of the foreign equivalents of Humpty-Dumpty.
Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes | Lina Eckenstein
British Dictionary definitions for humpty dumpty
/ (ˈhʌmptɪ ˈdʌmptɪ) /
a short fat person
a person or thing that once overthrown or broken cannot be restored or mended
Origin of humpty dumpty
1Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Cultural definitions for “Humpty Dumpty”
A nursery rhyme:
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.
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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