a person who avoids work and sponges on others; loafer; idler.
2.
a tramp, hobo, or derelict.
3.
Informal. an enthusiast of a specific sport or recreational activity, esp. one who gives it priority over work, family life, etc.: a ski bum; a tennis bum.
4.
Informal. an incompetent person.
5.
a drunken orgy; debauch.
–verb (used with object)
6.
Informal. to borrow without expectation of returning; get for nothing; cadge: He's always bumming cigarettes from me.
7.
Slang. to ruin or spoil: The weather bummed our whole weekend.
–verb (used without object)
8.
to sponge on others for a living; lead an idle or dissolute life.
9.
to live as a hobo.
–adjective Slang.
10.
of poor, wretched, or miserable quality; worthless.
11.
disappointing; unpleasant.
12.
erroneous or ill-advised; misleading: That tip on the stock market was a bum steer.
13.
lame: a bum leg.
—Verb phrase
14.
bum around, Informal. to travel, wander, or spend one's time aimlessly: We bummed around for a couple of hours after work.
—Idioms
15.
bum (someone) out, Slang. to disappoint, upset, or annoy: It really bummed me out that she could have helped and didn't.
16.
on the bum, Informal.
a.
living or traveling as or in a manner suggesting that of a hobo or tramp.
b.
in a state of disrepair or disorder: The oven is on the bum again.
[Origin: 1860–65, Americanism; perh. shortening of or back formation from bummer1; adj. senses of unclear relation to sense “loafer” and perh. of distinct orig.]
"buttocks," 1387, "probably onomatopoeic, to be compared with other words of similar sound and with the general sense of 'protuberance, swelling.' " [OED]
"dissolute loafer, tramp," 1864, Amer.Eng., from bummer "loafer, idle person" (1855), possibly an extension of the British word for "backside" (similar development took place in Scotland, 1540), but more prob. from Ger. slang bummler "loafer," from bummeln "go slowly, waste time." Bum first appears in a Ger.-Amer. context, and bummer was popular in the slang of the North's army in Amer. Civil War (as many as 216,000 Ger. immigrants in the ranks). Bum's rush "forcible ejection" first recorded 1910. Bummer "bad experience" is 1960s slang.
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'"
2.
a disreputable vagrant; "a homeless tramp"; "he tried to help the really down-and-out bums" [syn: tramp]
3.
person who does no work; "a lazy bum" [syn: idler]
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]
bum 1. To make highly efficient, either in time or space, often at the expense of clarity. "I managed to bum three more instructions out of that code." "I spent half the night bumming the interrupt code." In elder days, John McCarthy (inventor of Lisp) used to compare some efficiency-obsessed hackers among his students to "ski bums"; thus, optimisation became "program bumming", and eventually just "bumming". 2. To squeeze out excess; to remove something in order to improve whatever it was removed from (without changing function; this distinguishes the process from a featurectomy). 3. A small change to an algorithm, program, or hardware device to make it more efficient. "This hardware bum makes the jump instruction faster." Usage: now uncommon, largely superseded by v. tune (and tweak, hack), though none of these exactly capture sense 2. All these uses are rare in Commonwealth hackish, because in the parent dialects of English "bum" is a rude synonym for "buttocks". [The Jargon File]
Boom\ (b[=oo]m), v. i. [imp. & p. p. Boomed, p. pr. & vb. n. Booming.] [Of imitative origin; cf. OE. bommen to hum, D. bommen to drum, sound as an empty barrel, also W. bwmp a hollow sound; aderyn y bwmp, the bird of the hollow sound, i. e., the bittern. Cf. Bum, Bump, v. i., Bomb, v. i.]1. To cry with a hollow note; to make a hollow sound, as the bittern, and some insects. At eve the beetle boometh Athwart the thicket lone. --Tennyson. 2. To make a hollow sound, as of waves or cannon. Alarm guns booming through the night air. --W. Irving. 3. To rush with violence and noise, as a ship under a press of sail, before a free wind. She comes booming down before it. --Totten. 4. To have a rapid growth in market value or in popular favor; to go on rushingly.
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Audio Help [buhm] Pronunciation Key noun, verb, bummed, bum·ming, adjective, bum·mer, bum·mest. 
