Meaning & use
bumper
Last updated
Meanings
nouncountable
A strong bar fixed to the front and back of a vehicle to absorb the force of a collision.
Grammar: Countable; plural bumpers. Often compounds: front bumper, rear bumper.
Patterns
- front/rear bumper
- damage the bumper
- repair a bumper
A dent in the rear bumper made the used car harder to sell.
The bumper crumpled in the crash but protected the rest of the car.
adjectivebefore a noun
Much larger or more plentiful than usual, always placed before a noun such as crop, year, or sales.
Grammar: Stands only before a noun and has no comparative: say a bumper harvest, not a very bumper harvest.
Patterns
- a bumper crop
- bumper sales
- a bumper year
After the heavy rains, the village celebrated a bumper rice harvest.
The little shop had a bumper Christmas, with sales up forty percent.
nouncountablesport
In cricket, a fast ball bowled short so that it rises sharply toward the batsman's body.
Grammar: Countable; plural bumpers. A specialist cricket term; the same ball is also called a bouncer.
Patterns
- bowl a bumper
- duck under a bumper
The fast bowler surprised him with a bumper that flew past his chin.
He ducked just in time to avoid the bumper.
Word forms
| plural | bumpers |
|---|
Common combinations
- rear bumper
- A rear bumper absorbed most of the impact in the collision.
- bumper-to-bumper traffic
- We sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic for over an hour.
- a bumper crop
- The orchard produced a bumper crop of apples this year.
- bumper sales
- The bakery enjoyed bumper sales during the street festival.
- a bumper year
- It was a bumper year for tourism on the island.
Synonyms and how they differ
- abundant
- Abundant describes a large supply in general; bumper specifically means unusually large and comes before nouns like crop and sales.
- exceptional
- Exceptional stresses how rare or remarkable something is; bumper stresses sheer size or quantity.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: bumper or buffer?
bumper vs buffer
A buffer cushions or protects, like a buffer zone between two countries; a bumper is the specific impact bar on a vehicle.
Practice
After months of heavy rain, the region reported a ___ harvest of wheat.
Choose one answer.
Here the adjective bumper means 'unusually large', which matches a record harvest. Rear, dent, and cracked are all connected with vehicle damage, not size.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “bumper”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.