I used the phrase “like it or lump it” with my husband a few minutes ago, and he was unfamiliar with it.
Actually, I started out saying, “Can I get this other option, or do I have to lump it?” When he expressed confusion, I said, “You know, like it or lump it?” He still didn’t recognize it.
This is something we said all the time when I was growing up in Ohio. Are you familiar, and where are you?
Los Angeles native, and completely unfamiliar with it.
But you probably knew that.
Familiar.
All over, I’m from.
TX, CA, CO, KY, TN, OK, IA, LA, TX, TX, TX …
.
Middle-aged, East Coast, certainly have heard it.
I’ve heard it since I was little: mid-forties Maine.
NY, old. I’ve heard it and may have even said it.
Australia. Familiar with it; heard it many, many times.
Mid-20s, DC metro area. I’ve heard it and know what it means, but it isn’t especially common around here.
UK, know it well.
Michigan, know what it means.
Although now that you’ve brought it up, I never thought about where the “lump it” part comes from. I guess I’m not sure.
I started hearing it in the 1970s in central Indiana. It may have been there before, but that’s when I remember it being used frequently.
Middle-aged, from the Midwest, know it - though “lump it” alone might have thrown me off.
Heard it all my life. Grew up in KY.
+1
Eta: My SO knows it too, so that’s a yes from the UK too.
I grew up in Minnesota in the '60s and am familiar with the phrase, but I think it was more from reading than actually hearing it used. Hard to say, really.
UK also, so just adding another data point to say that it’s a completely ordinary phrase to me.
Raised near LA. Currently in the northern central valley. In my fifties.
Used to hear it fairly often, but not so much recently.
Wondering if the bumper shicker “America: Love It or Leave It” took some of the wind out of its sails.
^^^
That will show a book using the phrase as an example of something you could look up.
NY in the 60s. It was a common phrase.
Ohio native, living in the Northeast, here: Common term both places. No idea about the etymology of “lump” in this context, though.
More fully: “If you don’t like it you can lump it / Take it down the road and dump it.”