colloq. [f. prec.]
1. intr. To share chambers, to live together.
1730. Wesley, Wks. (1872), XII. 20. There are … some honest fellows in College, who would be willing to chum in one of them.
a. 1867. Tom Taylor, Ten, Crown Office Row, xi. 57. Good-bye, old rooms, where we chummed years, without a single fight.
1878. E. Robertson, in Colonies & India, 24 Aug. I had adopted a common and convenient Indian fashion and was ‘chumming’ with a friend.
fig. 1762. Churchill, Ghost, II. 40 (Hoppe).
| Wit’s forc’d to Chum with Common Sense, | |
| And Lust is yok’d to Impotence. |
2. trans. To chum one person on another: to put as an occupant of the same rooms.
1837. Dickens, Pickw., xl. You’ll be chummed on somebody to-morrow.
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.
1871. M. Collins, Mrq. & Merch., II. v. 143–4. She … found herself ‘chummed’ upon a young person who turned out to be … a thorough slattern.
Hence Chumming vbl. sb.
1838. J. Grant, Sk. Lond., 50. ‘Chumming’ and other internal arrangements of the prison.
1876. Cornhill Mag., XXXIII. 444. Solitary study kept him from chumming with his fellows.
