#39025
08/21/2001 10:38 AM
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My Canadian Oxford Dictionary says that the word "bum" is used in only Canada and the UK (and I suppose other Commonwealth nations?) to mean buttocks/bottom/ass. It indicates that in the US, "bum" does not take on this meaning. Of course, as in the US, we also understand it to mean a lazy/homeless/poor/unemployed person, like "hobo" (but somewhat more derogatory). For us, this is only a secondary meaning. I had always wondered why on earth Wal-Mart carries a line of clothing with initials B. U. M. on it, but when I read this I decided that maybe it's not offensive to US'ns, and it wouldn't be the first time that a company had no idea how to sell something to Canadians. I don't find it offensive, exactly, but I wouldn't write it on my clothes!  So, English speakers of the world, please let me know. When I first say the word "bum" to you, which meaning comes to your mind? Person or anatomy?
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#39026
08/21/2001 11:55 AM
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Most of USn's certainly know the anatomy definition of bum but I, for one, do not think of that first. I'd parbly have to be reminded. But then the person definition isn't all that complimentary, either.
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#39027
08/21/2001 1:39 PM
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During the thirties when many Canadians worked in New England, using the word "bum" in a bar could start a brawl. But I never heard Americans use it as a serious insult. It was innocuous enough that the Brooklyn Dodgers were frequently referred to in the newspapers as "Da Bums".
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#39028
08/21/2001 1:59 PM
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the two senses sort of blend together in the adjective: what a bum idea. <g>
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#39029
08/21/2001 2:19 PM
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I must admit I was quite perplexed the first time I saw this line of clothing in Singapore. I couldn't really work out whether this was some sort of nudge-nudge humour or just ignorance. Still not really sure.
Bingley
Bingley
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#39030
08/21/2001 2:20 PM
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#39031
08/21/2001 2:27 PM
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definately a person-- unless the person using the word was english- then anatomy..
and it's used in a lot of idioms-- "give a bum's rush" (to treat a person the same way you might treat a bum)
and bum'ed out-- to be as poor as bum, or as sad as one.
and i would distinguish a bum as being a local drunk, a down and out person , and a hobo as being a transient.. so "i see the same old bums every morning, sleeping in the railroad station".. (actualy, the have all been forced into out of sight places, and i never see the same old bums-- some of whom i had gotten to know by name)
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#39032
08/21/2001 2:35 PM
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B.U.M. cf, FUBUWell, FUBU doesn't sound like a word that I already know, so if it's written on a shirt it doesn't catch my attention. I just don't get the B. U. M. thing. I mean, if I wore a shirt that said T. I. T., you would all giggle first and ask questions later, wouldn't you? 
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#39033
08/21/2001 2:37 PM
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i would distinguish a bum as being a local drunk, a down and out person , and a hobo as being a transient.I was just attempting to find an approximate synonym, but yes, I agree, "hobo" somehow implies motion. (Incidentally our current favourite pizza place is called Hobo's. Yum yum.  )
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#39035
08/21/2001 3:06 PM
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Hi, Bean. No, we don't use the word bum to mean anatomy, but it's easy to tell by the context alone which sense is meant by a speaker: we wouldn't, for ex., tell a child to go sit on "a" bum! It would always take a possessive pronoun, I imagine. Here's the link to the B.U.M. equipment website: http://www.bumequipment.com/intro.htmlIt says the clothing company was started in a garage in Seattle, as a mild mockery of people who went around in clothes emblazoned with the name of their local gym. By the way, I've printed out your explanation of time being a dimension and not having momentum. EDIT: dag nab it, tsuwm!! Beat me out again!
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#39036
08/21/2001 3:44 PM
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Well, Bean, I have to admit to being more partial to bottoms than hobos! I recognise the other meaning too, in context. I also recognise Helen's phrases, including a bum note.
Here’s a nice sidelight on this meaning, from the London Times a few days ago!
Going With A Song
The most traumatic experience in my organ-playing career came not at a wedding but at a funeral. In my student days I sometimes deputised on the electronic organ in the local crematorium. It was a wheezy old instrument, and something about the way it was wired meant it had a tendency to pick up radio signals in certain atmospheric conditions.
One day the inevitable happened. The priest said “Let us sing Abide With Me, and I switched the organ on. But before my fingers hit the keys, a sound came out that set my heart pounding. “Wonder-ful Raaa-di-o One! It’s a Faaaaant-abulous Day in Swinga-ding-ding London,” said an inanely cheery voice from inside the organ.
Frantically I switched off, on, off again. The prattle continued regardless. “Here’s a song for every body stuck inside today!” the voice said. Thirty faces turned to glare at me, each one the spitting image of Munch’s The Scream. And then the crematorium was filled with the fantabulous sound of Gladys Knight and the Pips.
The priest rose superbly to the occasion. “How wonderful for dear Jack to depart this world on such a vibrant note,” he shouted over the music. And dear Jack’s coffin lurched out of sight to the strains of Help Me Make It Though The Night.
Much more appropriate than Abide With Me, we all agreed later. But the crematorium must have lost my telephone number, because my services were not requested again.
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#39037
08/21/2001 4:55 PM
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#39038
08/21/2001 7:21 PM
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I hear the word bum for buttocks every once in awhile, usually older generations.... except phrase "cute as a baby's bum" which transcends generations.
When I hear "bum" I sometimes think of "bottom" first as that is where my mind oft dwells ... a lot depends on context ... when I first saw the B.U.M. T-shirts I wondered what the letters stood for (still don't know) and then wondered why anyone would use the word BUM as a name thereby advertising that the product is bum (i.e. bad, inferior, worthless.) Then I bethought "Ah Ha! Corporate thinking" and that explained it all!
Meanwhile, dear Bean, in answer to your post : if I wore a shirt that said T. I. T., you would all giggle first and ask questions later, wouldn't you?
No, actually I would extrapolate Tit to Titmouse as the dictionary says tit is a short form of titmouse and probably (smart a** that I am) sweetly ask you) "Are you an ornithologist?"
How-some-ever, if you were wearing a shirt emblazoned with TEAT .... Well! (note restraint of impulse to use blush emoticon)
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#39039
08/21/2001 7:38 PM
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Pooh-Bah
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Traditionally the word bum to Americans has meant a down-and-out person or a hobo as described above. But thanks to comedian Michael Meyers formerly of Saturday Night Live many Americans are acquainted with the other, British meaning. (Meyers used to do a character named Simon who was a little British boy and he would say "Hello. My name is Simon, and I like to do drawings. [pronounced "drour-ings"] ...Are you looking at my bum? You cheeky monkey! Bum-looker!" etc
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#39040
08/21/2001 8:18 PM
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#39041
08/22/2001 4:42 AM
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In reply to:
Honestly, the first thing I think of when I see the word bum - no article, pronoun, or anything else - is the anatomical version. I get a fairly vivid mental image. I can't seem to prevent it. And I know my mother is of the same opinion because we discussed this once.
Aha. I zink we may be near a breakthrough in your analysis. Is zis image of zum particular person'z nezzer regions or of a Platonic ideal of the human buttockses?
Bingley
Bingley
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#39042
08/22/2001 7:25 AM
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For the word "bum" I also tend to think of the "part of the anatomy" meaning rather than "hobo". Speaking of lines of clothing with peculiar writing on them, how about the trendy high street label French Connection? The complete name is "French Connection UK", and they print, stencil or embroider their initials visibly on many of their articles of clothing. Many people walk around with "fcuk" on their T-shirts, and sometimes the makers of the clothes have played with the word to make double-meaning slogans. One I have seen just recently is "Too busy to fcuk", but they have many different ones. How is that for an attention-grabbing marketing strategy?
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#39043
08/22/2001 1:47 PM
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old hand
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B.U.M. isn't as sillly to me as is Jordache. The first time I was a woman with a tight pair of trousers proclaiming, "Jordache" across her bum, I thought to myself, "If they weren't so tight, her jord wouldn't ache," Now, just what is a jord? Oh, all this is giving me a headache, or a concentration cramp, or something...
The whole idea that we are so gullible that we allow mass marketing types to SELL US their advertisements sickens me!
"Lord, what fools these mortals be..." Puck
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#39044
08/22/2001 1:50 PM
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he first time I was a woman Oops, TYPO!!! saw, NOT was. Never have switched genders 
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#39045
08/22/2001 4:41 PM
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>if you were wearing a shirt emblazoned with TEAT ...
Some years ago I was in a grocery store line and there was a quite-well-endowed young lady standing behind me wearing a t-shirt with very small letters across it, right at the nipple line. The letters read: Awfully damned nosy, aren't you?
TEd
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#39046
08/22/2001 4:45 PM
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> Never have switched genders
So it wasn't you who starred in that movie about trans-sexuals: Been Her.
TEd
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#39047
08/22/2001 5:03 PM
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a t-shirt with very small letters across it, right at the nipple line.
Always did figure if you didn't want people reading your t-shirt you shouldn't have words on it.
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#39048
08/22/2001 11:58 PM
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If a gal has two good reasons, she wears T shirt.
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#39049
08/23/2001 1:12 AM
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old hand
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Confusion reigns in the stales' household on this one due to creeping Americanisation.
The (40+ y.o.) parents use bum in the anatomical sense (as would most Oztrayuns of their vintage) whilst the chilluns (10 & 12) think first of the hobo connotations (as would most Oztrayuns of their vintage).
So....tell me about "hobo" - where'd that spring from? A slur on those from Hoboken (or however it's spelt) perhaps?
stales
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#39050
08/23/2001 2:29 AM
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Pooh-Bah
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Unlike "bum," "hobo" is not necessarily derisive. While a bum is a shiftless person, a habitual loafer, a hobo is a vagrant or a migratory worker. My grandmother told me that hoboes were common during the Great Depression, when many, many displaced workers traveled with their few belongings from town to town, seeking available temporary work. They would often knock on her door, asking for employment, and she fed many a hungry hobo.
Per Webster's, "hobo" arises from a rhyming compound based on the greeting ho, beau. Origins A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English agrees: "...hobo represents ho! bo, ie ho! beau (for hello! beau), known to have been a tramps' formula of address in the 1880s and 1890s.
Charles Funk, in A Hog on Ice, observes this interesting relationship between bum and hobo:
One may be feeling "on the bum" when he's not OK physically. It is an American expression, dating back fifty years [ie, to 1907] or so. George Ade was the first to use it in print, but it comes from a dialectal English use of "bum," which for four hundred years has been a childish word for drink [!]. The American phrase thus first signified the condition one is in or the way one feels after overindulgence in drink.
But "on the bum" also means itinerant, living the life of a hobo. This second American use derives from a slang term which was current in San Francisco about a hundred years ago [ie, 1857], or during the gold rush. A "bummer" was a worthless loafer; later, during the the Civil War, a deserter who lived by raiding the countryside. Maybe the word was derived from the German Bummler, an idler, a loafer.
And how "bummer" came to mean a cause for disappointment or unhappiness...? Dictionary of Slang and Euphemism says that it came to designate any bad experience by extension from meaning a bad drug experience, but does not explain the drug usage.
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#39051
08/23/2001 4:42 AM
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Sparteye - BIG congrats on an impeccable piece of research.
re: "My grandmother told me that hoboes were common during the Great Depression.."
So too here in Oztraya - only they were referred to as "susso(s)" and "reffo(s)". I recall the reasons for this being explained by my grandparents and in the novel "My Brother Jack" by George Johnston. No doubt somebody will know the correct reasons, but it was something like: "susso" referred to those who'd work for food (sustenance) and those who wandered from place to place to do this were reffoes (refugees).
These provide yet another example of Ozzies adding a trailing vowel - because we can!! There's also: "ambo" for an amulance driver, "garbo" for garbage collector, Shaneo - Shane, Campo - the legendary David Campesi (known to all Rugby devotees - but nobody else). Just to be different, Fire Fighters aren't "firoes", they're "fieries". Confusing innit?
stales
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#39052
08/23/2001 4:56 AM
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In reply to:
Confusing innit?
Makes perfect sense to me, stalesy.
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#39053
08/23/2001 5:28 AM
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#39054
08/23/2001 11:58 AM
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If a gal has two good reasons, she wears T shirt.
I knew a woman had a t shirt with the words itty bitty titty committee writ across it. She was about a size 44 EE.
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#39055
08/23/2001 12:03 PM
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Per Webster's, "hobo" arises from a rhyming compound based on the greeting ho, beau.
Another one of those million etymologies words. Look arond some of the word origin sites and you'll see yet more, all of them debunked by somebody or other.
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#39056
08/23/2001 12:14 PM
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"Once a bum always a bum."
--John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley
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#39057
08/23/2001 7:45 PM
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veteran
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Stales has it right that Hoboken is a place; it's a city in northern New Jersey, just across the harbor from New York City and noted as being the place where Alexander Hamilton was shot by Aaron Burr. (At that time, Hoboken was a remote suburb where one could have a duel in privacy.)
"Hoboken numbers" are classification numbers given to the works of Franz Josef Hayden, named after the first editor/collector of his works, some unknown-to-me Herr Professor Hoboken (Musik -- any light on this?) and, as such are like the "K. nos." given to the works of Mozart, such as the Piano Concerto No. 21, K.467. K. stands for Koechel, the first editor/collector of Mozart. The work of Johann Sebastian Bach is generally classed by BWV numbers, but that is no one's name; it stands for "Bachwerkverein" the standard edition of the collected works of JSB.
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#39058
08/24/2001 1:40 AM
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In reply to:
I knew a woman had a t shirt with the words itty bitty titty committee writ across it. She was about a size 44 EE.
She'd have to be to fit it all on. And to cross threads, "writ" as opposed to written?
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#39059
08/24/2001 2:06 AM
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Stales has it right that Hoboken is a place; it's a city in northern New Jersey, just across the harbor from New York City and noted as being the place where Alexander Hamilton was shot by Aaron Burr.
And is also known for having the largest mosquitos of any major city on the North American continent.
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#39060
08/24/2001 2:09 AM
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SY, BobY, who is Hoboken named after? I always thought it was a Leni Lenape (Amerind) name. But your citation sounds like it might also be an old German/Germanic name (if, indeed, Professor Hoboken is not some mythological entity). And let's not forget to mention when speaking of Hoboken that many credit the town as the birthplace of baseball, the first game said to have been played at the fabled Elysian Fields. Most folks now dismiss the Cooperstown/Abner Doubleday origin as a fabrication. Thanks, all, for the great entymological look at hobo! And when I was a young rebel I had a T-shirt made with that Steinbeck quote on it, "Once a bum always a bum." People who didn't like long-hairs would sneer at it until they saw the John Steinbeck citation and they'd do a double-take! Sometimes they'd say, "John Steinbeck said that?" And I'd say, "Yup! He sure did! Ha!" Great fun to tweak folks like that then! Never did find a way to make a living as a bum, though! But my Dad once introduced me to a funeral gathering of old relatives, when I was in my 20's, as a "retired bum!" I'm still workin' on that one!
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#39061
08/24/2001 2:11 AM
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Talen Thomas, a poet currently residing in California, wrote a poem called "The Hobo That Gives a Hoot". I wish I knew the whole thing, but my favorite line is "I have thrown caution to the wind so many times...the wind is fairly full of caution." Another is "They say that hobos don't give a hoot. I'll give a hoot to anyone that asks. Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot!"
That last is delivered for as long as the breath holds out, kinda like a train whistle. See what happens when you hang out around a bonfire at Stone Circle. You get infected by poetry.
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#39062
08/24/2001 1:51 PM
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See http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-hob1.htm. Note the distinction between hobo, one who travels to find work and tramp, one who travels to avoid work.
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#39063
08/24/2001 1:56 PM
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Sparteye:
Doubtless you are correct, but there's also a school of thought that many of these vagrants were former pugilists whose brains had been addled by a few too many punches. They were known as homeless boxers, which quickly was abbreviated as hobo.
There's actually not a WORD of truth in the preceding paragraph except for the first phrase of the first sentence. But truthfully there is a dog rescue group here which calls itself HOBO because they rescue homeless boxers.
Ted--mourning the loss of his faithful Shorts, who went to the big back yard in the sky yesterday at the incredible old age of ca. 15, Methuselah for boxers.
TEd
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#39064
08/24/2001 3:54 PM
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Shorts, who...
Oh, Honey, I'm sorry! Pets can really become one of the family (Hi Pearl, lusy, et. al.). The dog I had the longest died at the same age--or rather, I had her put down when the pain-relief shots stopped working--and I still get tears in my eyes, thinking of that day. I gave her one last huge treat: her favorite, a peppermint stick!--and took her.
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