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
The best performance documentation in the exhibition is a video recording of his “Piano Destruction Concert: Humpty Dumpty Had a Great Fall,” recorded live at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1996.
From New York Times • Jul. 28, 2022
“It’s impossible to critique CJ’s work because it’s always mangled, glued together like this. I mean, we’re talking serious Humpty Dumpty every time.”
From "I'll Give You the Sun" by Jandy Nelson
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.
