Meaning

(dated) A friend; a pal..

Definitions by Sense

1. (dated) A friend; a pal.
2. (dated) A roommate, especially in a college or university.
3. (intransitive) To share rooms with someone; to live together.
4. (transitive) To lodge (somebody) with another person or people.
5. (intransitive) To make friends; to socialize.
6. (transitive, Scotland, informal) To accompany.
7. (fishing, chiefly Canada, US) A mixture of (frequently rancid) fish parts and blood, dumped into the water as groundbait to attract predator fish, such as sharks.
8. (fishing, ambitransitive) To cast chum into the water to attract fish.

Example Sentences

He looked down upon the girl beside him—a daughter of the desert walking across the face of a dead world with a son of the jungle. He smiled at the thought. He wished that he had had a sister, and that she had been like this girl. What a bully chum she would have been!

That made Thad think of Mark Twain, and he wondered whether the illustrious Tom Sawyer and his chum, Huckleberry Finn, had ever arranged a more fetching reception committee than this one[…]

Looking at the backgrounds of the leading personalities in the Brexit drama, it is hard not to conclude that Britain has been led into crisis in large part by a bunch of old chums who spent the last year holed up in a political hall of mirrors, plotting with and scheming against one another.

Field had a 'chum,' or room-mate, whose visage was suggestive to the 'Sophs;' it invited experiment; it held out opportunity for their peculiar deviltry.

Henry Wotton and John Donne began to be friends when, as boys, they chummed together at Oxford, where Donne had gone at the age of twelve years.

A chap named Eleazir Kendrick and I had chummed in together the summer afore and built a fish-weir and shanty at Setuckit Point, down Orham way. For a spell we done pretty well.

I was not surprised to see somebody sitting aft, on the deck, with his legs dangling over the mud. You see I rather chummed with the few mechanics there were in that station, whom the other pilgrims naturally despised—on account of their imperfect manners, I suppose.

"You'll make yourself disliked on board!" "By von Heumann merely." "But is that wise when he's the man we've got to diddle?" "The wisest thing I ever did. To have chummed up with him would have been fatal -- the common dodge."

Word Forms

• chums
• choom
• chumming
• chummed

Synonyms for chum

Related Words

When Should You Use Chum?

Use chum when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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