Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US gay) one who frequents holiday resorts and beaches looking for sex.

1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 29: beach bitch homosexual who sets up a cruisy camp on the beachheads during the balmy summer months.
1988		H. Max Gay (S)language.

(Aus./S.Afr./US) a person, usu. a teenager, who hangs around the beach all day and surfs.

1944		Sat. Eve. Post 217 59/1: Back at the profession of being a beach bum, a salt-water playboy, a bronzed Adonis for the adoration of the hepcats.
1950		Life 28 Aug. 116: [headline] Life Revists the Ski Bums And Finds That Now They Are Beach Bums.
1957		Kappa Alpha Jrnl 74:1 53: We intend to better last year's runner- up position in volley-ball as several of our beach-rat actives have had all summer in which to become exper.
1958		E. Gilbert Vice Trap 18: Those beach bums had nothing on me.
1967		W. Murray Sweet Ride 128: I’m just a beach bum.
1979		D. Gram Foxes (1980) 134: Loser, looking scuzzy as a beach rat, walked into the living room.
1990		J. Wambaugh Golden Orange (1991) 295: They come and go like grunion, these beach bums.
1996		P. Beatty White Boy Shuffle 26: I was an ashy-legged black beach bum sporting a lopsided trapezoid natural.
1999		Eve. Standard 28 May 60: Moving from hip-happy salsa to beach-bum languor.
2000		Guardian Guide 12–18 Feb. 53: A beach bum press-ganged into service as a navy look-out on a wartime Pacific island.
2010		Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg) 12 Mar. 🌐 imagining lazy days as a beach bum.
2020		T. Pluck ‘Hula Hula Boys’ in What Pluckery Is This? (28 Jan 2024) 🌐 He had to call home and beg for a cash transfer to pay the beach bum.

a young woman who frequents the world of surfing, but does not herself surf.

1963		Paradise of the Pacific 75 27/2: [glossary] highway surfer, phoney; kook, novice; beach bunny, girl.
1964		Libraty Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries 2304/4: Kumin, Maxine W. Beach bunny catchin’ rays.
1976		S.W. Hull Surfing Subculture in Santa Cruz 17: These young girts interact regularly wilh the locals and form similar territonal boundaries. The beach bunny rarely surfs but actively participates in many of the surfing group’s other activities.
1984		J. Ellroy Because the Night 134: The woman [...] looked like a burned-out beach bunny. Her face was seamed from too much sun.
1990		(con. c.1970) G. Hasford Phantom Blooper 185: The beach bunnies were like pink frisky seals and promised to take off their bikinis if the Eskimo Commandoes would denounce Karl Marx.
1998		Source Nov. 202: How about the beach-bunny with the butterfly tattoo right above her, uh ...
2000		Guardian G2 10 Apr. 16: He had been so frightened of his children becoming Californian beach bunnies.

a beggar who favours seaside resorts, and poses as a sailor.

1889–90		Barrère & Leland Dict. of Sl., Jargon and Cant.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1950		W. Granville Sea Slang of 20th Century 28: beach-cadger. An ex-seaman tramp who haunts the foreshore at a seaside resort.

see separate entry.

(US) out of work, impoverished; bereft of a lover.

1888		W.B. Churchward Blackbirding In The South Pacific 104: They knew if they did I should get money and go off to some ship, and that they didn’t want, but liked to keep me on the beach to work for almost nothing.
1899		R. Wildman Tales of the Malayan Coast 234: I had seen hundreds of them ‘on the beach’ in Singapore, [...] ‘Loafer’ was written all over them.
1900		T.J. Hains Mr Trunnell Mate of the Ship ‘Pirate’ Ch. i: By some means, needless to record here, I found myself, not so many years ago, ‘on the beach’ at Melbourne, in Australia.
1925		(con. WWI) Fraser & Gibbons Soldier and Sailor Words 20: Beach, On The: Discharged. Set aside.
1934		R.E. Howard ‘Slugger’s Game’ in Jack Dempsey’s Fight Mag. May 🌐 I can’t even get a ship to sign on. If I don’t scram away from here soon, I’ll be on the beach.
1936		W.A. Gape Half a Million Tramps 303: On the beach, fellah?
1941		F. Sargeson ‘That Summer’ in Coll. Stories (1965) 167: I’m on the beach myself, I said, but I can make it a deener.
1955		R. Graziano Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) 265: I was unemployed. I was on the beach, washed up.
1960, 1975		Wentworth & Flexner DAS.
1969		R. Starnes Flypaper War 2: [T]he good chap had gotten an attack of American middle-class rectitude and gone home to wife and snotlings, leaving poor Mary on the beach.
2000		P. Cornwell Last Precinct 42: ‘They’ve put me on the beach.’ ATF slang for suspension.

(N.Z. women’s prison) to wander around the wing.

2001

D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 14/2: walk around the beach to wander around the wing, in no particular direction and with no specific purpose.