/daʊn ɪn ðə ˈdʌmps/
English idiom, informal. To feel low, gloomy or a bit depressed.
Draft Not yet checked by a native English speaker.
How do people use Down in the dumps
?
Informal and friendly, the kind of thing you say about a mild low mood rather than real depression. It usually follows “be” or “feel”: “I’m a bit down in the dumps”, “Tom seems down in the dumps”. People often soften it further with “a bit” or “a little”.
Also said in the dumps
Down in the dumps
in real sentences
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I feel down in the dumps today.
Tatoeba, sentence by SSquared, CC BY 2.0 FR
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Tom seems to be down in the dumps.
Tatoeba, sentence by CK, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does Down in the dumps
come from?
The “dumps” here have nothing to do with garbage. English Wiktionary traces the phrase to an old sense of “dump” meaning a gloomy state of mind, which already shows up in the plural in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (“doleful dumps the mind oppress”) and in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Where that gloomy “dump” came from in the first place isn’t settled.
Mistakes learners make with Down in the dumps
Learners picture a rubbish dump and say “down in the dump” or “down in a dump”. The phrase is always plural with “the”: “down in the dumps”.
Other English idioms like Down in the dumps
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