respectable; ten per cent. earn excellent wages, and twenty per cent. are chronic bums, who beg or steal the price of their lodgings.
Hence bummerism, to express habits of loafing and petty stealing, and bummerish (adj.).
Bumming, verb, subs. (Wellington College).—A thrashing, or licking. Cf., Bum, sense 1.
Bump, subs. (University).—When one boat touches another in a race it is said to 'make a bump,' and technically beats its opponent. Cf., verbal sense, and Bumping race.
Verb.—To overtake and touch an opposing boat, thus winning the heat or race.
1849. Thackeray, Pendennis, ch. iii. He listened, and with respect too, to Mr. Foker's accounts of what the men did at the University of which Mr. F. was an ornament, and encountered a long series of stories about boat-racing, bumping, College grass-plats, and milk-punch.
1860. Macmillan's Magazine, March, p. 331. The chances of St. Ambrose's making a bump the first night were weighed.
1865. Sketches from Cambridge, p. 7. I can still condescend to give our boat a stout when it makes a bump.
1886-7. Dickens, Dictionary of Cambridge, p. 11. Any boat which overtakes and bumps another . . . before the winning post is reached, changes place with it for the next race.
Bumper, subs. (common).—1. Anything of superlative size, whether a 'big lie,' horse, house, or woman. Cf., Corker, Whopper, and Thumper.
2. (theatrical.)—A full or crowded house.
1838. Dickens, Nich. Nickleby, ch. xxiv., p. 192. 'In the confidence that our fellow-towsmen have not lost that high appreciation of public utility and private worth, for which they have long been so pre-eminently distinguished, we predict that this charming actress will be greeted with a bumper.
3. (cards'.)—When, in long whist, one side has scored eight before the other has scored a point, a bumper is the result.
Bum-Perisher, Bum-Shaver, subs. (common).—A short-tailed coat; a jacket. [From bum, the posteriors, + perisher, a slang variant of that which 'perishes,' or fails to protect (from cold, etc.).] Cf., Bum curtain.
Bumping Race, subs. (University).—Eight-oared inter-Collegiate races, rowed in two divisions of fifteen and sixteen boats respectively, including a sandwich boat (q.v.), i.e., the top boat of the second division, which rows bottom of the first. The boats in each division start at a distance apart of 175 feet from stern to stern in the order at which they left off at the last preceding race, and any boat which overtakes, and bumps another (i.e., touches it in any part) before the winning post is reached, changes place with it for the next race.
Bumpkin, subs. (old).—A humorous term for the posteriors.
1658. [In Nares] Wit Restored.
And so I take my leave; prithee, sweet Thumkin, Hold up thy coats, that I may kisse thy bumkin.
Bump-Supper, subs. (University).—A supper to commemorate the fact of the boat of the college having, in the annual races, 'bumped' or touched the boat of another college immediately in front. Cf., Bumping race.
