hump [E18th] If something annoying makes you get the hump or puts your back up the word is being used in something like its original sense. Humpbacked arrived first in English in the mid 17th century and is probably related to Low German humpe ‘hump’, and to Dutch homp ‘lump, hunk of bread’. Hump could also be used to mean ‘complaint’, especially in the rhyming phrase humps and grumps, the ancestor of get the hump.