different between humpback vs hunchback

English

Alternative forms

• hump-back

Etymology

hump +? back

Pronunciation

Noun

humpback (plural humpbacks)

1. A humped back (deformity in humans caused by abnormal curvature of the upper spine).
   • 1691, John Dunton, A Voyage Round the World, London: Richard Newcome, Chapter 6, p. 122,^[1]

     […] the Stone in my Fathers Body was so immense, that I’ve wonder’d it did not bunch up behind, and make him have a Hump-back, or at least overpoise him in walking, and drag him backward with its incredible weight.

   • 1709, Richard Steele, The Tatler, No. 75, 1 October, 1709 in The Lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff Esq., London, 1712, Volume 2, p. 166,^[2]

     In the Male Line, there happened an unlucky Accident in the Reign of Richard the Third; the eldest Son of Philip, then Chief of the Family, being born with an Hump-back and very high Nose.

   • 1817, Walter Scott, Rob Roy, Chapter 11,^[3]

     Diana Vernon, the most beautiful creature I ever beheld, in love with him, the bandy-legged, bull-necked, limping scoundrel! Richard the Third in all but his hump-back!

   • 1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair, Chapter 63,^[4]

     […] Mr. Jos had the honour of leading out the Countess of Schlusselback, an old lady with a hump back, but with sixteen good quarters of nobility and related to half the royal houses of Germany.

   • 1948, Philip Gibbs, Behind the Curtain, Toronto: The Ryerson Press, Chapter 5,^[5]

     He saw Dmitri half rise from his chair so that the shadow of his humpback shifted on the whitewashed wall.

   1. (by extension) A hump or protuberance on the shoulders or back of an animal.
      • 1902, Somerset Maugham, Mrs Craddock, London: Heinemann, 1955, Chapter 16, p. 157,^[6]

        […] the cows stood about with gloomy eyes and hump-backs, surly and dangerous […]

      • 1969, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Earth Shine, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, “Immersion in Life,” p. 52,^[7]

        On the bare hills one begins to see unfamiliar silhouettes of animals against the sky. […] the peaked humpbacks of gnu on a ridge […]

   2. (figuratively) A rounded topographical feature, such as a mountain or hill.
      • 1858, Royal B. Stratton, Captivity of the Oatman Girls, San Francisco: [for the author], Chapter 4, p. 134,^[8]

        On either side were the high, irregularly sloped mountains, with their foot hills robed in the same bright green as the valley, and with their bald hump-backs and sharp peaks, treeless, verdureless, and desolate […]

      • 1968, Barry England, Figures in a Landscape, New York: Random House, Part 1, p. 78,^[9]

        The Goons kept appearing and disappearing in different places, always closer to them, as they worked their way over the humpback of the terrain.

      • 2002, Michael Collins, The Resurrectionists, Penguin, 2006, Chapter 38, p. 286,^[10]

        I could see clear out to the humpbacks of small islands along the great lake, where small banks of fog hung.

2. (derogatory, now offensive) A person with a humpback; a person who suffers from kyphosis.

   Synonyms: crookback, hunchback

   • 1860, George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, Book 2, Chapter 6,^[11]

     […] Tom’s more specific and kindly impressions gradually melted into the old background of suspicion and dislike toward him as a queer fellow, a humpback, and the son of a rogue.

   • 1951, Graham Greene, The End of the Affair, Penguin, 1975, Book 2, Chapter 7, p. 81,^[12]

     […] I stared up at the raw spots on his cheek and thought, there is no safety anywhere: a humpback, a cripple—they all have the trigger that sets love off.

3. A humpback whale.
4. A humpback salmon.

Derived terms

• humpback bridge
• humpback salmon
• humpback whale

Related terms

• humpbacked

Translations

See also

• kyphosis

Verb

humpback (third-person singular simple present humpbacks, present participle humpbacking, simple past and past participle humpbacked)

1. To hunt humpback whales.
   • 1895, Charles Nordhoff, Whaling and Fishing, New York: Dodd, Mead, Chapter 10, p. 191,^[13]

     The captain of the James Rodgers […] was an old hand at humpbacking […]

   • 1953, Emma Mayhew Whiting and Henry Beetle Hough, Whaling Wives, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Chapter 16, p. 240,^[14]

     […] the Alice Knowles […] did her whaling in the south Atlantic, by turns humpbacking off the African coast and cruising around Tristan in season.

English

Etymology

Back-formation from hunchbacked.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?h?nt?bæk/

Noun

hunchback (plural hunchbacks)

1. One who is stooped or hunched over.
2. A deformed upper spinal column in the shape of a hump in the back.
3. (derogatory) A person with kyphosis, a spinal deformity that causes a hunched over appearance.

Synonyms

• humpback
• stooped

Derived terms

• hunchbacked

Translations