This is an opinion column.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary is like holy writ in my house, where gauntlets – preferably not gantlets, according to Merriam – are tossed with some force over disputed words and uses.

But Merriam-Webster fails us, Alabama.

So does the Oxford English Dictionary and Dictionary.com. They just don’t know.

Not one of those vaults of stored wisdom acknowledges the true meaning of the word “tump.”

Inconceivable.

They say tump is a noun, chiefly used in England, that means a mound or small hill. Or secondarily a clump of vegetation, which sounds more like a clod to me. Not the clump, but the clod who wrote it down as fact.

I’m not trying to make a mountain of an obscure English synonym for molehill, but any fool knows tump – tumped; tumping; tumps – is a verb that means:

To knock over, usually by pushing an object at its highest point until it plops sideways.

“Hold the phone a second, Bubba. I just tumped over the lemonade.”

Or..

“Why did Jesus tump over those tables in the temple?”

It’s a beautiful word, always used with “over.” It is short, to the point, with a dash of onomatopoeia, if you hold your ears right.

Any boob should see that. But a lot of boobs don’t. Because it turns out you have to be from Alabama, or select locales across the South, to really appreciate a good tump.

People north of Virginia look at me funny when I say my tea tumped over. Even the software I’m writing on underlines my every tump and labels it as misspelled, or misused.

It made me want to tump something over. Until I realized a tump could bring us together.

People like to think of Alabama and places like it as though they’re all one thing, they lump us together and make assumptions based on Finebaum callers, or Tommy Tuberville’s word vomit, or “Floribama Shore,” or their own experiences. Some assumptions we deserve, apparently. Others we don’t.

But of course we in the South are not all alike. I live in a green neighborhood in a blue city in a red state where people are dark and light and all the shades in between. Some of them choose to go barefoot on their lawns because they like to feel the grass between their toes. Some of them do it while pregnant, but they have most of their teeth and everything.

So we fight over politicians, or decide not to talk about politics when it doesn’t seem worth it, and too often disdain those who think in different ways. We assume things about each other in the same way others assume things about us. We can’t agree on ways the past is responsible for our present or what the future should look like. Like everybody. It takes a lot out of us.

So it is important to remember that we share a lot of things – besides high blood pressure and cholesterol. Some days it is worth looking at what we share instead of the things we won’t.

Like “y’all,” the very best pronoun, which is now accepted by Merriam-Webster.

Like how it’s impossible not to say “turn it up” when even the saddest cover band starts in on “Sweet Hope Alabama.”

Like farmer’s markets and summer tomatoes and cornbread – no sugar please – dipped in collard greens. Like the perfume of mimosa or magnolia or gardenia, or the way people down here put on their new jackets in October, even if it makes them sweat. Like waving to neighbors and nodding to drivers at the opposite stop sign, or just being able to joke about a world they love.

How do you tell somebody to “get lost” in Alabama?

Tell ‘em to take the exit with the Alexander Shunnarah sign.

We are not one thing, and that’s a good thing. But we share beautiful things. Like the word tump, which is like a Southern secret password.

So embrace it, and maybe on some days we can tump over all that other stuff that makes us forget what’s to love about this place, or each other. Tump it over, and start something new.

John Archibald is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for AL.com.