to take a dump
1
9.2
- phrasal verb
- Specialized
:
hacer un volcado
Examples
-
Now, is this supposed to be the place, or did his car just take a dump?
-
Your bail hearing took a dump.
-
It's going to take a pretty big player to take a dump in the market for treasuries to get hammered.
Blog text (23) -
It just takes a dump on everything genuinely original and intriguing about the show that kept a lot of people hooked for six years.
Blog text (4) -
That's right, work for your money, then when you get your check, half of it is gone to the federal government to give some other slack individual drugs, or a computer to take a dump on real news, and you may be a little "crazy" yourself.
Blog text (28) -
The software will take a dump of the entire database for backup purposes.
-
Before debugging, the engineer decided to take a dump of the system's memory.
-
To analyze the program's state, you need to take a dump of the current process.
Synonyms
73
3.2
Make a copy of computer files to prevent loss
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
take + a + dump
The computing sense ('to create a copy of memory') is a domain-specific metaphor not derivable from the literal parts: with 'dump' defined as an informal noun for a bowel movement, the phrase is normally interpreted as 'defecate'. A B1 learner who knows the constituents would therefore likely not infer the technical/data meaning without prior exposure, so the expression is idiomatic and not transparent.
Etymology
In computing, take a dump comes from the idea of emptying a computer's memory into a 'dump' file to study later, like taking the contents out and putting them in one place. So it means 'to make a copy of memory or data'.