Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(usu. UK juv.) the stomach.

1837–8		‘The Fine Young Common Prostitute’ in Cuckold’s Nest 41: One night, she met a cove / Who nearly cracked her bum, / Because he really had, O dear, / Such a stunning rum ti-tum.
1848		Bell’s Life in Sydney 18 Nov. 1/5: Take a broom in your hand now. it will save you the use of tum and tongue.
1880		Bulletin (Sydney) 30 Oct. 9/1: And frequently he tapped his little ‘tum’.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 6 June 11/4: The direction to Timothy to take a little wine for the sake of his little tum-tum, has been often distorted by temperance advocates […].
1887		W.S. Gilbert ‘A Discontented Sugar Broker’ Fifty ‘Bab’ Ballads 81: Most people think that, should it come, / They can reduce a bulging tum.
1895		J.S. Wood Yale Yarns 5: Munching away, with a broad grin on his face, and no one knows how much truck and crackers in his little tum.
1899		Boy’s Own Paper 15 July 667: Fancy having a live crab in your ‘tum-tum,’ old man!
1900		F.P. Dunne Mr Dooley’s Philosophy 39: If th’ Transvaal raypublic wud rather have a Dum-Dum bullet in its tum-tum thin grant to Englishmen th’ r-right to run th’ govermint.
1904		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 2 Mar. 3/3: ‘Oh, Mr. — , have you seen my Tum-tum?’ ‘Heaven forbid,’ exclaimed the curate, and fled.
1907		H. Champion ‘That Funny Little Bob-Tailed Coat’ [monologue] Then I filled my tummy tum just as tight as any drum .
1915		Weston & Darewski [perf. Mark Sheridan] ‘And the villain still pursued her’ 🎵 And in its ’tum' she said ‘Great Scott!’ / For the villain still pursued her.
1922		‘Sapper’ Black Gang 391: Jolly old tum-tum beginning to shout for nourishment.
1923		Wodehouse Inimitable Jeeves 6: That he could [...] think me capable of insulting the old tum with this sort of stuff cut me to the quick.
1929		Helen Kane ‘Button Up Yout Overcoat’ 🎵 Lay off meat, ooh-ooh, / You’ll get a pain and ruin your tum-tum!
1936		J.T. Farrell World I Never Made 497: As soon as your little tum-tum is better.
1945		G. Fairlie Capt. Bulldog Drummond 22: He’d have been picking shot-gun pellets out of his tum-tum all the same.
1947		J. Maclaren-Ross ‘The Dark Diceman’ in Bitten by the Tarantula (2005) 210: The loaded coffee was like a fire in his empty tum.
1959		C. MacInnes Absolute Beginners 26: His gymnastic uniform [...] had slipped a bit to show a fold of hairy olive tum.
1960		(con. c.1918) D. Holman-Hunt My Grandmothers and I (1987) 15: I expect she’s too busy stuffing her tum.
1966		P. Boyle At Night All Cats Are Grey 170: Perhaps sugar plum has wind in his poor wee tum-tum?
1971		L. Sanders Pleasures of Helen 199: ‘[J]ust a little something to settle the old tum-tum’.
1980		A. Maupin More Tales of the City (1984) 202: How’s the tum-tum?
1982		Beano 17 Apr. 18: It’s OK – it was just my empty tum!
1990		R. Gool Cape Town Coolie 125: Bad for tum-tum. Gives Aisha colley-wobbles.
2020		(con. 1991-94) W. Boyle City of Margins 131: ‘He’s got an uneasy tum-tum’.