Bum

Since this complex term has a wide variety of meanings and tones, this entry focuses on the more critical. There are three basic senses in American English—namely as a noun, meaning “an idler, layabout, or loafer”; as a verb, “to beg”; and as an adjective, “of low quality, substandard, or not right.” All ultimately originated in German bummler , “an idler,” and bummeln , “a leisurely stroll,” found in Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men on the Bummel (1900). The earliest appearance of bum in America in the first sense (“he’s just an idle bum”) is about 1830, and it has remained the strongest, but is not common in British usage. However, the term in previous decades was applied to a promiscuous woman or cheap prostitute, and is still current in more sophisticated types like tennis bum or ski bum , “a person who lives or tries to live by his or her sports talent and charm without being genuinely professional” (Chapman 1986). From this meaning it was a short semantic step to the verbal usage “to bum a ride” or “to bum around,” and a number of varied uses, such as stumblebum (an alcoholic derelict) and bummer (originally, from the mid-nineteenth century, an idler, but from the 1960s a disappointing narcotic experience, and subsequently a bad time generally).

Historically, British usage has included a considerable number of these derogatory senses, but the oldest is “a bum card,” meaning “a marked playing card,” recorded in John Northbrook’s Treatise Against Dicing, Dancing, Plays, and Interludes (1577). An early eighteenth-century verse (Tom Brown, The Poet’s Condition ) complains: “My levee’s all duns / Attended by bums” (“My party’s full of bailiffs attended by loafers”). Many other contemporary and later uses are found, such as plain bum , meaning “disreputable,” and bum bailiff , defined by Dr. Johnson as “a bailiff of the meanest kind; one that is employed in arrests.”

The principal sense in British usage is anatomical, defined by Dr. Johnson as “the buttocks; the part on which we sit.” Recorded from Middle English, it was in general use until about 1800 when, in Eric Partridge’s words, “it began to lose caste” ( Dictionary of Historical Slang 1972). It accordingly generated a great number of compounds, such as bum thrasher for a school master, bum sucker for a toady or sponger, and bum fodder for trashy literature. This last appears to have been coined in a satire on the Rump Parliament written about 1660, probably by one Alexander Brome, memorably titled “Bumm-Fodder; or, Waste Paper proper to wipe the nation’s rump with, or your own.” The term immediately caught on and has continued to the present in the euphemized forms bumf and bumph .

Like the related terms tail and arse, bum has also carried a sexual sense, found in bum shop , a brothel; bum boy , a catamite; and bum fuck for sodomy (current in American English, although the euphemism buns is preferred for buttocks ). The term thus shows in its various semantic histories a variety of disreputable associations, namely idleness, dishonesty, and promiscuity. Outside American and British usage, in Australia and South Africa, for example, the term is not greatly used.