Definition of "lumpen"

New York was the only really hostile city. Perhaps there is a certain element of the lumpen literati that is so dogmatically atheist and materialist and Earth-bound that it finds the grandeur of space and the myriad mysteries of cosmic intelligence anathema.

1968, Stanley Kubrick, Playboy magazine interview, September 1968, page 94

This something, which is neither body nor machine but interior and alien to them both, pertains to the 'meat' in Gibson's world insofar as the 'meat' - that useless corporeal remainder discarded by the machine - retains an excess that cannot be reduced to the lumpen mass of fleshy existence.

2000, Joanne Morra, Mark Robson, Marquard Smith, The Limits of Death: Between Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, page 72

Using the last two as an example, there is a constant sense of contrast in the poem, in this case between the streamlined ship which will surge through the water and the mere lumpen shape of the clumsy iceberg.

2001, Adrian Beard, Texts and Contexts: Introducing Literature and Language Study

Billy and Dandy had draped a tarp over the body but the shape itself looked lumpen and grotesque.

2003, Dana Stabenow, A Grave Denied, page 17

a slaloming winger putting lumpen defenders on their backsides, or even a sneaky centre-forward, using his boundless energy to lead the press and force mistakes.

2020 August 7, Jonathan Liew, “Phil Foden stars to offer Manchester City glimpse of multiple futures”, in The Guardian‎

They had chicken soup with the matzo meal balls a little lumpened by hurry, challah, roast chicken, kasha, honey-cake.

1959, Harold Uriel Ribalow, The chosen, page 298