bum, adj. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

bum adj.

1. (orig. US) useless, second-rate, poor, inferior, dirty, ragged.

1859		Pacific N.W. Quarterly XXXI 292: Bum River Ferry [DA].
1884		C.F. Lummis letter 25 Nov. in Byrkit Letters from the Southwest (1989) 111: Two bum looking strangers came in.
1887		Daily Trib. (Bismarck, ND) 23 Oct. 4/1: A long [theatrical] part is a ‘soaker’ [...] a poor one is ‘bum.’.
1898		H.H. Lewis Gunner Aboard the ‘Yankee’ 28: These floating peddlers sold articles which, to use a slang phrase, were pretty ‘bum’.
1902		‘Billy Burgundy’ Toothsome Tales Told in Sl. 121: A bloke with bum duds is not especially fascinating to women.
1910		‘O. Henry’ ‘The Day Resurgent’ Strictly Business (1915) 51: Well, how is that for a bum guess?
1914		Sport (Adelaide) 4 Sept. 5/1: Cockney S. is going to the front as a first-class amateur. He must not fancy he is with the bum boxers.
1917		W.H. Walp diary 17 July 🌐 Bum guard. Throat ground shut. Can’t do anything with it. Cold dinner & bum supper; bum cook cause of it. Wish we could lose him.
1920		F.S. Fitzgerald ‘Bernice Bobs Her Hair’ in Scott Fitzgerald V (1963) 90: She has a bum time. Men don’t like her.
1921		N. Putnam West Broadway 17: I got to Fifth [Avenue] with all the handsome cars and bum old taxis crawling on it.
1930		(con. 1900s–10s) Dos Passos 42nd Parallel in USA (1966) 86: He was sick of the bum grub and hard life on the sea.
1930		N. Lindsay Redheap (1965) 168: ‘How’s the bum drama goin’?’ they asked.
1940		R. Chandler Farewell, My Lovely (1949) 214: It was a bum idea I had anyway [...] They’ll tear you to pieces out there.
1952		Lait & Mortimer USA Confidential 92: The serving of bum booze to minors.
1968		J. Hersey Algiers Motel Incident 67: They did a [sic] awful bum job on him.
1978		R. Caron Go-Boy! 230: He apologised for the bum luck with the Brink’s truck.
1989		M. Amis London Fields 262: I looked like a bum, in bum suit, under bum hair, on bum shoes.
1999		Guardian Sat. Rev. 12 June 8: The bum notes of dialogue, the duff characters.
2000		Guardian Weekend 25 Mar. 28: His sister [...] screws up her face like a Brussels sprout when she fancies she hears a bum note.
2012		J.J. DeCeglie ‘Death Cannot Be Delegated’ in Crime Factory: Hard Labour [ebook] It was a bum play though. Put a murder rap directly on me.
2021		J. Ellroy Widespread Panic 5: I’ve got emphysema and a bum pump.

2. fake, counterfeit; thus bum dough, bum paper, counterfeit notes; bum paper artist, a counterfeiter.

1882		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 29 Apr. 2/2: [T]he worst elements of our society—the snobs, cads [...] and ‘bum’ aristocracy .
1896		Ade Artie 104: I’d [...] spring one o’ them bum notes.
1903		A.H. Lewis Boss 174: They don’t amount to a deuce in a bum deck.
1914		Truth (Melbourne) 14 Feb. 5/7: Under the cloak of bum patriotism a bunch of bombastic bounders had sedt going another of these little clubs.
1924		G. Henderson Keys to Crookdom 396: Counterfeit money. Also called bum dough. [Ibid.] 401: Counterfeiter. One who makes bogus money [...] Bum-paper artist.
1929		G. Ahern ‘Our Boarding House’ [comic strip] Mean to say you can write your name under Mike Angelo’s? – You could on a bum check.
1934		J.M. Cain Postman Always Rings Twice (1985) 87: I told a bum story first.
1935		A.J. Pollock Und. Speaks n.p.: Bum paper, a fraudulent check.
1944		E. Wilson 13 May [synd. col.] Billingsley likes him [i.e. a dog] because he never gets drunk and never passes bum checks.
1954		J. Blake letter 12 Jan. in Joint (1972) 38: Danny had been plastering all the jewellers in town with bum checks.
1985		N. Pileggi Wiseguy (2001) 91: We do the usual thing about getting rented cars and putting on bum plates.
2000		G.V. Higgins At End of Day (2001) 162: Some pissin’ contest over a bum cheque that got out of hand.

3. slightly ill, under the weather.

1930

(con. 1900s–10s) Dos Passos 42nd Parallel in USA (1966) 107: You see the rest of the show. I feel kind of bum.

4. (US) of a part of the body, injured; malfunctioning.

1902		C.L. Cullen More Ex-Tank Tales 97: I can see you hunting around for raw steak for two bum lamps and a bondsman into the bargain.
1912		D. Lowrie My Life in Prison 60: You haven’t got any bum fingers, or a broken arm [...] have y’r?
1919		E. Hemingway letter 3 Mar. in Baker Sel. Letters (1981) 21: The leg is pretty bum.
1923		H.C. Witwer Fighting Blood 135: Lee’s handlers yells for him to go after my bum eye.
1939		Howsley Argot: Dict. of Und. Sl. 10: bum wing–an injured arm.
1944		D. Burley Orig. Hbk of Harlem Jive 107: They claimed bum tickers — From drinking bad likkers.
1953		F. Paley Rumble on the Docks (1955) 77: Jimmy had a bum knee.
1959		M. Richler Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1964) 80: He’d say he had a bum ticker and had been given only six months to live.
1971		T. Thackrey Thief 50: Christ, I got a bum back to this day!
1989		C. Hiaasen Skin Tight 142: Not with this bum wing.
1995		C. Hiaasen Stormy Weather 323: With his bum knee, Snapper was easy to catch.
2001		J. Stahl Plainclothes Naked (2002) 18: Get one of these bum tickers to smoke out in the sack, it’s payday.
2005		‘Gut Feeling’ at coldbloodedgames.typepad.com 8 May 🌐 Night time security is a fat clown with a drink problem and an aged ex-cop with a bum knee.
2023		(con. 1962) J. Ellroy Enchanters 333: Bill Parker is losing it [...] The booze, the bum ticker [...] the way he keeps shooting his mouth off.

5. (US, also bummin’) depressed.

1901		J. London ‘Local Color’ Complete Short Stories (1993) I 695: ‘And how’s Slim?’ ‘Bum. Bulls is horstile.’.
1928		J. Callahan Man’s Grim Justice 190: They [i.e. the police] knew that I was bum, that I was a hop head, that I had lost my guts.
1989		Eble Campus Sl. Mar. 1: bummin’ – depressed.

6. unfair; as adv., unfairly.

1900		A.H. Lewis ‘Crime That Failed’ in Sandburrs 81: It was d’ bummest finish, all d’ same.
1905		H. Green Actors’ Boarding House (1906) 70: I suttenly know I’m bein’ used bum in this act!
1917		O.O. McIntyre New York Day by Day 8 Mar. [synd. col.] It is a bum world at times after all.

7. of food, stale, bad, ‘off’.

1914		W. Thaw letter 13 Sept. in ‘The War Letters of Two Yale Undergraduates’in Yale Alumni Wkly 22 Jan. 484: [T]he food is pretty bum and we’ll get plenty of chance to eat it when we get to the front.
1930		W.R. Burnett Iron Man 293: Why did he feel slightly sick at his stomach? Maybe he had eaten some bum food.
1920		Hartford Repub. (KY) 24 Dec. 4/3: Our luck has been the bumest of all the bum luck.
1956		‘Ed Lacy’ Men from the Boys (1967) 15: I’ve had some bum food and my stomach won’t let me sleep.
1960, 1975		Wentworth & Flexner DAS.

8. (US) aggressive, threatening.

2001

(con. 1964–8) J. Ellroy Cold Six Thousand 92: The vibe went bad. The spooks vibed lynch mob. Pete caught bum looks.

In derivatives

bumsky (adj.) [-ski sfx]

(US) second-rate, inferior.

1916		DN 4 354: bumsky ‘What a bumsky shot.’ Exclamation of woman who missed her approach in a golf match.
1919		Eve. Missourian (Columbia, MO) 19 Sept. 4/1: University Folk knoiw Old Frisco Brakeman as ‘Mr Bumsky’.

In compounds

bum beef (n.)

see under bum beef under beef n.²

bum bend (n.)

an adverse reaction to a hallucinogenic drug.

1969

R.R. Lingeman Drugs from A to Z (1970) 52: bum bend [...] A psychotic or panic reaction to lsd-25 or stp.

bum check artist (n.) (also bum checker, check artist) [SAmE check + -artist sfx]

(US Und.) one who passes bad cheques.

1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn) 48: check artist A forger of checks.
1952		C. Hamilton Men of the Und. 107: The lowly ‘short-story writer’ as the bum-check artist is called in the underworld.
1963		in T.I. Rubin Sweet Daddy 32: Plenty bum checkers, muggers, hustlers in here.

bum clink (n.) [Midlands dial.]

bad or second-rate beer.

1873		Sl. Dict. 102: Bumclink in the Midland counties the inferior beer brewed for hay-makers and harvest labourers. Derivation obvious.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.

bum deal (n.)

(orig. US) a poor bargain, a mistaken agreement.

1905		‘Hugh McHugh’ You Can Search Me 49: That’s where Charlie gave us the bum deal.
1916		J. Lait ‘Charlie the Wolf’ Beef, Iron and Wine (1917) 57: He’ll kill a copper. They all does, them kind o’ boys what’s made sore by what they thinks is a bum deal.
1958		E. Gilbert Vice Trap 16: You get sold a bum deal, you know?
1987		Eble Campus Sl. Oct.
1999		Guardian 16 July 11: If someone does a bum deal, he’s moved aside.
2004		Fort Lauderdale (FL) Sentinel 26 Oct. 🌐 If workers have received a bum deal from the administration’s so-called stimulus, the federal budget has fared worse.

bumfinger

see separate entries.

bumkick/kicks

see separate entries.

bumrap

see separate entries.

bumrush

see separate entries.

bum steer (n.) (also bad steer)(US)

a piece of bad advice or misinformation.

1907		D. Runyon ‘Fat Fallon’ From First to Last (1954) 35: I christen thee the Bum Steer.
1908		K. McGaffey Sorrows of a Show Girl Ch. xix: I says to him, ‘What license you got to give a lady a bum steer like that?’.
1913–14		E. O’Neill The Web in Ten ‘Lost’ Plays (1995) 64: Yuh tell ’em yuh don’t know anything about me, see? Give ’em a bum steer.
1915		R. Lardner ‘Harmony’ Coll. Short Stories (1941) 197: Now I’ve never given you a bad steer in my life.
1923		T.A. Dorgan in Zwilling TAD Lex. (1993) 21: Watching the sap who is to shoulder the check as he eases himself in for a bum steer.
1938		J. Weidman I Can Get It For You Wholesale 330: So what are you afraid of? Would I give you a bum steer, Meyer?
1947		B. Schulberg Harder They Fall (1971) 79: Hey, fellers, you don’t think Nick would give us a bum steer?
1949		A. Hynd We Are the Public Enemies 59: His wife, Blanche [...] was waiting for him at the gate. ‘I gave you a bad steer, Daddy,’ she said.
1959		Mad mag. Jan. 8: Don’t worry! I’ve had a bum steer before.
1964		P. Highsmith Two Faces of January (1988) 65: Was Rydal giving him a bum steer?
1977		J. Sayles Union Dues (1978) 378: I personally got my own difficulties, couple wrong guesses, couple bum steers.
1986		R. Campbell In La-La Land We Trust (1999) 42: I’m a big tipper. I even tip people who give me lousy service and bum steers.
1986		C. Bowles G’DAY 89: Jeez, ya know me Shane. Would I give ya a bum steer?
1989		(con. 1950s–60s) in G. Tremlett Little Legs 127: He ended up putting someone on a bad steer.
1999		Guardian G2 25 Nov. 4: It was incorrectly reported [...] the paper admitted. Oh dear, bit of a bum steer.

bum trip (n.)

1. any bad situation, experience.

1959		‘Paul Merchant’ ‘Sex Gang’ in Pulling a Train’ (2012) [ebook] It had turned into a bum trip all round.
1966		H.S. Thompson Hell’s Angels (1967) 139: They had been shunted off to a parched meadow nine or ten thousand feet up in the Sierras, but it was obviously a bum trip.
1969		Gandalf’s Garden 6 n.d. 10: bum-trip: [...] Now applied to bad experiences or poor quality music, events, people, etc.
1981		J. Ellroy Brown’s Requiem 70: That chemotherapy shit is a bum trip.

2. an unpleasant experience while under the influence of drugs; as a v., to be subjected to an unpleasant and frightening time; thus bum-tripper n., one who is suffering such an experience.

1968		L. Wolf Voices from the Love Generation 69: They’ve got a philosophy that [...] obliges them to love somebody who’s bum-tripping them, or selling them bad acid.
1968		N. von Hoffman We are the People Our Parents Warned Us Against 16: Bum Trippers and Emergencies Only. [Ibid.] 87: Aren’t you going to help my friend [...] she’s bum-tripping bad.
1969		L. Yablonsky Hippie Trip 268: A large mental hospital population of psychotic ‘bum-trippers’.
1971		E.E. Landy Underground Dict. (1972).
1978		S. King Stand (1990) 55: He could remember a girl who had bum-tripped and gone screaming down the bone-white beach as naked as a jay.

3. (US campus) an uninteresting or lazy person.

1970

Current Sl. V:3.

In phrases

bum (out) (v.)

see separate entry.

bum for (adj.)

(US) bad for, e.g. one’s health.

1925

Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer 110: Ought to go out and eat, bum for the digestion to eat irregularly like I do.

on the bum (adj.) (also on a bum)

1. broken, out of order, deteriorating; lit. and fig. use.

1874		J.H. Carter Log of Commodore Rollingpin 101: I’ve been on a terrible bum for the last year, and have been going down hill until I’m nothing but a wreck. Will you please advise me what course to pursue, that I may get up in the world again.
c.1880		‘O’Reilly’ [US army poem] He drank with all the rookies, and shoved his face as well, / The whole outfit is on the bum, / O’Reilly’s gone to Hell.
1895		Anaconda Standard (MT) 15 Dec. 10/1: Dey tink anything’s good enough for er moocher but [...] some er der stuff dat I got dis trip — Say, it was on de bum, sure.
1901		W. Irwin Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum XI n.p.: Love has put your optics on the bum.
1901		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 17 July 3/3: There were eight bouts [...] and out of the lot only one bout [...] was worth looking at. All the others were decidely on the bum.
1910		‘O. Henry’ ‘Babes in the Jungle’ Strictly Business (1915) 40: I’m afraid your art education is on the bum.
1912		Day Book (Chicago) 23 Mar. 15/2: She jabbed [the umbrella] into one of John’s lamps and put that on the bum.
1917		‘Going Home Song’ in J.J. Niles Singing Soldiers (1927) 3: My whole inner workings have gone on the bum.
1926		J. Black You Can’t Win 257: I gathered from it that his cash register ‘bane on the bum.’ Something got wrong with its locking arrangement the night before.
1932		B.M. Harvey Me and Bad Eye and Slim 228: Phoned my mother [...] but the line was on the bum and couldent [sic] hardly hear her.
1948		(con. 1944) N. Mailer Naked and Dead 92: When it [i.e. a machine] had gone on the bum, he’d taken it all apart and then fixed it.
1960		‘Nino Culotta’ Cop This Lot 35: Noothin’ can be seen with it. The thing’s on the boom.
1981		J. Ellroy Brown’s Requiem 184: My air conditioner went on the bum and now I am roasting.

2. rubbish, second-rate, inferior, in a bad condition.

1896		Ade Artie (1963) 21: I sized it up that the house was on the bum and she did n’t want me to see it.
1905		H. Green Actors’ Boarding House (1906) 220: Good guys is up agin’ it cause things is on the bum.
1912		A. Berkman Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (1926) 260: My shoes are on th’ bum. I am walking on my socks.
1923		H.C. Witwer Fighting Blood 84: The whole joint is on the bum, for a fact!
1931		‘Police Prerogatives’ in Irwin Amer. Tramp and Und. Sl. 249: You’re one of them American Bullsheviski, / Runnin’ around puttin’ the country on th’ bum.

3. (US campus) drunk.

1900

‘College Words and Phrases’ in DN II:i 25: Bum, n. [...] In phrase ‘on the bum.’ 2. Usually drunk.

4. feeling slightly unwell.

1917		Van Loan ‘By a Hair’ Old Man Curry 82: That being the case [...] and Elisha on the bum, I guess I’ll take a night off.
1934		H. Miller Tropic of Cancer (1963) 142: She doesn’t want anything to drink; her stomach’s already on the bum.

put (someone/something) on the bum (v.) (US)

1. to cause trouble for someone or something.

1908		B. Fisher A. Mutt in Blackbeard Compilation (1977) 59: You’re supposed to take my picture flirting with this Parisian beauty and show it to the heiress which puts me on the bum and I lose out. [...] I’m supposed to be vexed because you put my wedding on the bum.
1925		Gleason & Taber Is Zat So? II i: Uncle Hap said all skirts were goofs, and for me not to bother with them ever, or they’d put me on the bum.
1931		(con. 1890s) A.F. Harlow Old Bowery Days 493: Do you want to put me on the bum, like Tim Campbell and Sulzer? Nit!
1932		V.F. Nelson Prison Days and Nights 27: Those guys [i.e. lawyers] do some real harm. They put banks and whole communities on the bum.
1965		(con. 1930s) R. Wright Lawd Today 158: ‘Ain’t it funny how dopey you feel after you done downed a big meal?’ ‘It puts you on the bum.’.

2. to hurt someone, to beat someone up.

1904		T.A. Dorgan in Zwilling TAD Lex. (1993) 67: Dave Barry put Nicholls on the bum in two rounds.
1905		H. Green Actors’ Boarding House (1906) 32: They put the guy on the bum while her nibs makes a gitaway.