Now colloq. Also 8 chumm. [Recorded only since c. 1684. A well-known conjecture is that it was a familiar abbreviation of chamber-fellow, chamber-mate, or the like. But no historical proof or connecting link has been found.]
One who shares apartments with another or others, one who lodges or resides in the same room or rooms: ‘a chamber-fellow, a term used in the universities’ (J.); also, more generally, a habitual companion, an associate, an intimate friend. Now chiefly in familiar colloquial use with school-boys, fellow-students; also with criminals, convicts, etc.
1684. Creech, Theocritus, Idyll, xii. Ded. To my chum Mr. Hody of Wadham College.
c. 1690. B. E., Dict. Cant. Crew, Chum, a Chamber-fellow, or constant Companion.
1691. Long Vacation, Ded. 1. Thou and I were Chums together at Brazenose College.
1718. Freethinker, No. 17. 117. I … quarrel with my Chum every Night.
1749. Fielding, Tom Jones, VIII. xi. He had no doubt … but that his chum was certainly the thief.
1771. Smollett, Humph. Cl. (1815), 65. My college chum, Sir Reginald Bently.
1798. Anti-Jacobin, No. 31. 188. ‘Co-occupants of the same room in a house let out at a small rent by the week.’—There is no single word in English which expresses so complicated a relation, except perhaps the cant term of chum, formerly in use at our Universities.
1812. J. H. Vaux, Flash Dict., Chum, a fellow prisoner in a jail, hulk, &c.; so there are new chums and old chums. Ibid. (1819), Mem., I. xii. 133. Our society [in Jail] was increased by several new chums before the sessions.
1820. W. Irving, Sketch Bk., II. 90. The parson had been a chum of his father’s at Oxford.
1826. Southey, Vind. Eccles. Angl., 502. The students were friends and chums, a word so nearly obsolete, that it may be proper, perhaps, to explain it, as meaning ‘chamber-fellows.’
1854. Thackeray, Newcomes, I. 42. He and an Indian chum of his.
1860. All Y. Round, No. 65. 346. My chum at Eton.
1882. Miss Braddon, Mt. Royal, III. viii. 148. Leonard and she are great chums.
b. In Australia: new chum, a fresh immigrant, a ‘greenhorn’; old chum, an old and experienced settler.
1886. P. Clarke (title), The ‘New Chum’ in Australia. Ibid., 25. A man often means by it, ‘There’s a poor weak-minded ignorant fool…; all that he has learnt is but of little avail to him, nay, perhaps may hinder his graduating as an old chum; he’s got to be educated all over again.’
2. Comb. chum-master, chum-ticket; see quot.
1838. J. Grant, Sk. Lond., 52. When there is more than one person to each room…, the new-comers are, what is called ‘chummed’ on the previous inmates…. When a prisoner is first confined within the walls, he is entitled to what is termed a ‘chum ticket,’ which is a small piece of paper on which one of the officers of the prison, called the chum-master, writes the name of the party, and the number of the room in which he is to be ‘chummed.’
