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bum
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
bum
I.noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
bum bag
bums on seatsBritish Englishinformal (= used for saying that something or someone can attract a large audience)
▪ He is an actor who will put bums on seats.
gets a bum rap
▪ Cleveland always gets a bum rap in the press.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
beach
▪ Parke Puterbaugh and Alan Bisbort are beach bums and proud of it.
▪ You envision a California beach bum.
■ VERB
get
▪ Oh yes, they're very good at theory but no bloody good at getting off their bums and looking for themselves!
▪ But I got the bum who led them.
▪ With a face like mine I never get my bum pinched or felt!
▪ So far the film, which is bound to get a few bums on seats for that scene alone, is untitled.
▪ He's got a great bum.
▪ Chocolat has been nominated for five Oscars, so it's bound to get a lot of bums on seats.
put
▪ When you can put bums on seats, then you can come and tell me what flights you want to travel on.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a bum/bad rap
▪ She said social programs of the 1960s have gotten a bad rap in the 1990s.
▪ They got me on a bum rap.
▪ Yalta's bad name was in some ways a bum rap.
a bummer
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ A couple of bums were passing a bottle in a doorway.
▪ She's always complaining about her husband, but she won't throw the bum out.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ I thought the members had been waiting, just waiting, for the chance to throw the bums out.
▪ Parke Puterbaugh and Alan Bisbort are beach bums and proud of it.
▪ Quigley peered down at its bum.
▪ The same bums in the same pound seats.
▪ Throw out those bums, and get some people willing to get results.
▪ You envision a California beach bum.
II.verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
around
▪ I've spent years on the road with natro groups, mostly abroad, just bumming around.
▪ Mine is bumming around Grand Forks.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ He's always bumming drinks off people and it really gets on my nerves.
▪ I bummed a ride from Sue.
▪ I think Steve managed to bum a lift home.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ BTheodora sees Johnny up the street, bums a little change, then heads to a nearby liquor store.
▪ For the last 18 months of his life, he bummed money, cigarettes and sympathy from his friends.
▪ He spent a whole year bumming from friends, crashing in strange places, selling weed with pals to make his bread.
▪ In a cabin soaked in pure oxygen at greater than atmospheric pressure for five hours, almost anything bums.
▪ Once empty the external tank is jettisoned and will bum up in the atmosphere.
▪ Please help me out before I shrink, fade or bum all my new does.
▪ Then he laughed, and Petey felt it was worse that Ted had laughed, because afterward he seemed bummed out.
III.adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
rap
▪ They got me on a bum rap.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ He gave me a lot of bum advice.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ I moved the bum leg then, limped toward the door, and I started to spin.
▪ It's going to be a bum deal all through for poor Cliffy.
▪ It really was bum shooting, Jack.
▪ The board also urged the courts to impose the maximum fines on bum landlords.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
bum

bum \bum\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. bummed; p. pr. & vb. n. bumming (?).] [See Boom, v. i., to roar.] To make murmuring or humming sound.
--Jamieson.

to bum around to wander about idly or aimlessly.

bum

bum \bum\ (b[u^]m), v. t. To borrow without intention of returning; to cadge; as, to bum a cigarette; to bum a cup of coffee; -- usually with inexpensive items as the object. [informal]

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
bum

"buttocks," late 14c., "probably onomatopœic, to be compared with other words of similar sound and with the general sense of 'protuberance, swelling.' " [OED]

bum

"dissolute loafer, tramp," 1864, American English, from bummer "loafer, idle person" (1855), probably from German slang bummler "loafer," from bummeln "go slowly, waste time." Bum first appears in a German-American context, and bummer was popular in the slang of the North's army in the American Civil War (as many as 216,000 German immigrants in the ranks). Bum's rush "forcible ejection" first recorded 1910.

bum

"of poor quality," 1859, American English, from bum (n.). Bum steer in figurative sense of "bad advice" attested from 1901.

bum

1863, "to loaf and beg," American English, a word from the Civil War, perhaps a back-formation from bummer "loafer," or from bum (n.). Meaning "to feel depressed" is from 1973, perhaps from bummer in the "bad experience" sense. Related: Bummed; bumming.

Wiktionary
bum

Etymology 1 interj. (label en UK) An expression of annoyance. n. 1 The buttocks. 2 (context UK Irish AU New Zealand informal rare Canada US English) The anus. 3 (context by metonymy informal English) A person. vb. (context UK transitive colloquial English) To sodomize; to engage in anal sex. Etymology 2

  1. 1 Of poor quality or highly undesirable. 2 Unfair. 3 Injured and without the possibility of full repair, defective. 4 Unpleasant. n. 1 (context North America colloquial English) A homeless person, usually a man. 2 (context North America colloquial derogatory English) a hobo 3 (context North America Australia colloquial English) A lazy, incompetent, or annoying person, usually a man. 4 (context North America Australia colloquial sports English) A player or racer who often performs poorly. 5 (context colloquial English) A drinking spree. v

  2. 1 (context transitive colloquial English) To ask someone to give one (something) for free; to beg for something. 2 (context intransitive colloquial pejorative English) To behave like a hobo or vagabond; to loiter. 3 (context transitive slang British English) To wet the end of a marijuana cigarette (spliff). Etymology 3

    vb. To depress; to make unhappy. Etymology 4

    n. (context dated English) A humming noise. vb. (context intransitive English) To make a murmuring or humming sound. Etymology 5

    n. (context obsolete English) A bumbailiff.

WordNet
bum
  1. v. ask for and get free; be a parasite [syn: mooch, cadge, grub, sponge]

  2. be lazy or idle; "Her son is just bumming around all day" [syn: bum around, bum about, arse around, arse about, fuck off, loaf, frig around, waste one's time, lounge around, loll, loll around, lounge about]

  3. [also: bumming, bummed]

bum
  1. n. a person who is deemed to be despicable or contemptible; "only a rotter would do that"; "kill the rat"; "throw the bum out"; "you cowardly little pukes!"; "the British call a contemptible person a `git'" [syn: rotter, dirty dog, rat, skunk, stinker, stinkpot, puke, crumb, lowlife, scum bag, so-and-so, git]

  2. a disreputable vagrant; "a homeless tramp"; "he tried to help the really down-and-out bums" [syn: tramp, hobo]

  3. person who does no work; "a lazy bum" [syn: idler, loafer, do-nothing, layabout]

  4. the fleshy part of the human body that you sit on; "he deserves a good kick in the butt"; "are you going to sit on your fanny and do nothing?" [syn: buttocks, nates, arse, butt, backside, buns, can, fundament, hindquarters, hind end, keister, posterior, prat, rear, rear end, rump, stern, seat, tail, tail end, tooshie, tush, bottom, behind, derriere, fanny, ass]

  5. [also: bumming, bummed]

bum
  1. adj. of very poor quality [syn: cheap, cheesy, chintzy, crummy, punk, sleazy, tinny]

  2. [also: bumming, bummed]

Wikipedia
Bum

Bum or bums may refer to:

Usage examples of "bum".

He lifts the adz again, wondering why Tullar delivers charcoal in such large chunks, and why the smithy bums so much-but he knows the second reason.

His sweet, innocent daughter living with an ambitionless, borderline bum.

Ride Shamu, tend the Jupiter Lighthouse, dive the Atocha, perform my one-man salute to Claude Pepper at the Kravis Center, become a surf bum in Jensen, join the harvesting of the oysters at Apalachicola, take a billfish on flyrod, double-eagle at PGA National, ride with the Blue Angels from Pensacola, deliver peace and justice to my Cuban exile community.

Bum fingers Begay confidently pointed the way, remembering the view from his earlier near-cosmic vantage point.

Most of them had bummed across the country at least once, before they finally enlisted.

The whole bunch of sodomistic ballerinas -- Rectum Steve, Cocky Paulo, Shitstabber Jacky, Bummer Nige and the rest -- are beside themselves.

As a boy he had dreamed of finding this lost family treasure, and here in LA the bummer cinematographer, who was also to die in suspicious circumstances, presented the object to him with a stern warning of the negative powers attached to the relic.

Liam eased Norton back to the ground, crouched, and braced himself as Bummer jumped into his lap with a joyful yip.

Chen had only a moment to nod before Bummer began performing fantastic acrobatic leaps about his soft-shod feet.

She caught Bummer and lifted the terrier over the back of the seat and into her lap.

She gazed at the cable car while Bummer barked at a mongrel on the sidewalk.

The dogs were with herNorton bounding ahead and doubling back again, Bummer chasing the waves at her feet.

They came running, Bummer dancing around and around his feet and Norton leaning companionably against his side.

It would have meant the anatomizing of his compulsive violence and his fear of justice, of his time with Helen, his present defection from Helen, his screwing so many women he really wanted nothing to do with, his drunken ways, his morning-after sicknesses, his sleeping in the weeds, his bumming money from strangers not because there was a depression but first to help Helen and then because it was easy: easier than working.

If you shut your eyes, you could believe you were back in the jungle on the outskirts of some little jerkwater town, smooth dusty under the trees on the leeward side of a grade that passed the watertank and cut off the wind, sitting around the small fire with a belly full of a good mulligan that you had been assigned the bumming of the carrots for, or maybe the onions, or the spuds.