Is a brilliantly pungent term for those fake and obviously fake eyelashes that seem to be fashionable amongst a certain subset of the female population. The sort who also go in for excessive lip filler, tons of makeup, and clothing in the colour ecru.
I first encountered this excellent term in June of this year, when I was invited to a wedding in Shrewsbury. The bride, as it happened, ran a pub, and I was chatting with the happy couple at one point and all of a sudden the bride notices one of the groom's less salubrious relatives.
"Oh stone me Arthur, your cousin's got her cumbrellas in."
"Her what, Mildred?"
"Her cumbrellas." Bride gestures to eyes. I look and notice that said cousin is dressed in the manner of a badly wrapped present and with a big bow on her head and with, as promised, those enormous fake lashes. You can tell they're fake because they're vantablack, excessively big, and only cover around 80 percent the width of her eyelids so they've got a sort of cut out corners type effect. Even from a distance this is the case.
Mildred then explains that they're called as much because allegedly they were invented so that young ladies with the reputation of being the town bike could use them as a way to reduce the probability of pinkeye. Derivation should be self explanatory. When I get back to where I belong I google this and apparently there was a meme in late 2021 about how cumbrellas were invented in the late 19th century by a high class prostitute in London for precisely this purpose. As it happens, they weren't; fake lashes have apparently been around for a very long time. Though it makes for a good story. A bit like something that would have been worthy of LieQuest 2022 round these parts; John Thomas Cholmondeley-Minge would totally have approved. To be fair, and trying not to be all that judgemental, but if you will wear those obviously fake lashes, get stuff thrust into your lips to look like a duck, apply makeup with a builder's trowel, and then post for thirsty images on Instacrap and ShitTok, well... you have only yourself to blame really, and I honestly can't understand why anyone would want to look like a RealDoll that's had ChatGPT installed on it. As for the term itself, post that wedding I thought about submitting it to Roger's Profanisaurus in Viz but I found that someone already did so months ago. Bugger.
(IRON NODER 2023 #9)