undumpish

English

Etymology

From un- +‎ dumpish.

Verb

undumpish (third-person singular simple present undumpishes, present participle undumpishing, simple past and past participle undumpished)

1. (transitive, nonce word) To relieve from the dumps; to cause to cheer up.
   • a. 1662 (date written), Thomas Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England, London: […] J[ohn] G[rismond,] W[illiam] L[eybourne] and W[illiam] G[odbid], published 1662, →OCLC:

     When the Queen was out of humour, he could undumpish her

   • 1942–3, Ivor John Carnegie Brown, A Word in Your Ear; And, Just Another Word‎^[1], published 1963, page 63:

     True, they in the end give the droll his immortality, but they can be a terrible affliction in the meantime to those who would live by undumpishing.

   • 1954, Punch, volume 227, page 140:

     Who, Dr. Weisblatt asked, could undumpish the Chairman of the Coal Board (apparently one of the most oppressive of the public bodies of the day), or tell him his faults effectively, if not a Coal Board Fool?

   • 2001, Beatrice K. Otto, Fools Are Everywhere, →ISBN, page 90:

     Will Somers could “undumpish” Henry VIII, and Armin gives an account that he says in living memory of some still at Greenwhich, of how he succeeded in making a solemn Henry first smile and then laugh enough to forget his bad mood, all with a riddle[.]

Further reading

• “undumpish”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.