0 past simple and past participle of stump
1 to be unable to answer a question or solve a problem because it is too difficult:
I'm completely stumped - how did she manage to escape?
2 to stomp
3 to travel around an area giving speeches and trying to get political support:
Hollywood stars stumped for the Democratic candidate.
4 If the person hitting the ball in cricket is stumped, their turn to try scoring points is ended by a member of the other team knocking the bails off the stumps with the ball while they are outside a safe area.
But then, why aren't some people stumped about how to behave when they encounter unfamiliar niches?
As we all know, when stumped by some difficult (conscious and linguistically formulated) problem, it often helps to sleep on it, or to turn our conscious thinking to other matters.
He bowed to pressure and stumped up the extra £1 million.
As in all former reports, up-to-date figures were given of acreages tree-felled, acreages stumped and under crop.
I do not agree that he was stumped.
I have to admit to being stumped on this.
I was similarly stumped, and scrabbled to think of one or two things.
During the year, they stumped up another £26 million because so many bad pollution incidents were hitting the press that they had to do something.
