Basic Details
Word: Humpty
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: The first half of Humpty Dumpty, the round, egg-like character in the nursery rhyme who falls off a wall and cannot be put together again.
How to Spell Humpty
Syllables: hump - ty
Tricky part: The p between m and t is easy to swallow when speaking, so students write humty. The ending is y, not ey or i.
Watch out for: humty, humptey, humpti
Memory tip: A camel's hump plus ty: hump + ty. Say the p out loud each time you write it.
Usage Examples
Example 1: My little cousin wanted to hear Humpty Dumpty five times before bed.
Example 2: In the school play, Sameer wore a round costume and acted as Humpty.
Example 3: The rhyme about Humpty is one of the first many children learn by heart.
Fun Fact
In Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass (1871), Humpty Dumpty argues with Alice and claims that a word means just what he chooses it to mean.
Practise the CREST Way
Word Cookie
Choose the correct letters to fill in the blanks:
hu_p_y
a) m, t
b) m, p
c) m, d
d) n, t
Show answer
a) m, t. Humpty is hump + ty, so m comes before p and t comes after it.
Spell-o-Spell
Choose the meaning of the only correctly spelt word:
1. charactor 2. humpty 3. nursary 4. rhime
a) a school for very young children
b) part of the name of an egg-shaped rhyme character
c) a short poem with lines that end alike
d) a person in a story, play or film
Show answer
b) part of the name of an egg-shaped rhyme character. Nursery is spelt with er, rhyme with rhy and character with er at the end; humpty is the correctly spelt word.
Mingle-Mangle
Unjumble the letters in the sentence to form a meaningful word:
Every child in the nursery class could recite the rhyme about tmpyhu Dumpty and his great fall.
a) grumpy
b) empty
c) humpty
d) dumpy
Show answer
c) humpty. The rest of the sentence names the rhyme, and only humpty uses the h and the u.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. According to the rhyme, who could not put Humpty together again?
a) the queen's cooks
b) all the king's horses and men
c) the village children
d) the royal doctor
Show answer
b) all the king's horses and men
2. Humpty Dumpty is usually drawn as ____.
a) an egg
b) a cat
c) a ship
d) a tree
Show answer
a) an egg
