subs. (colloquial).—1. A chimney-sweep’s climbing boy. [A corruption of ‘chimney’ through ‘chumley.’]
1835. DICKENS, Sketches by Boz, p. 169. Vereas he ’ad been a CHUMMY—he begged the cheerman’s parding for using such a vulgar hexpression, etc.
1844. THACKERAY, Greenwich—Whitebait, wks. (1886) XXIII., 380. The hall was decorated with banners and escutcheons of deceased CHUMMIES. [M.]
1851–61. H. MAYHEW, London Labour and the London Poor, vol. II., p. 417. A CHUMMY (once a common name for the climbing-boy, being a corruption of chimney).
1859. W. GREGORY, Egypt, I., 154. His shrill voice, high up aloft, like a CHUMMY’S on a London summer morn. [M.]
2. A diminutive form of CHUM (q.v.).
1864. W. S. GILBERT, Bab Ballads, Etiquette. Old CHUMMIES at the Charterhouse were Robinson and he. [M.]
3. (common).—A low-crowned felt hat. For synonyms, see GOLGOTHA.
Adj. (colloquial).—Very intimate; friendly; sociable. The analogous French terms are chouette; chouettard; chouettaud.
1884. Harper’s Magazine, Sept., p. 536, col. 2. I … saw them form into small CHUMMY groups. [M.]
1888. BESANT, Herr Paulus, bk. III., ch. xi., vol. III., p. 204. I liked the fellow, I confess, and we got CHUMMY in the evenings.
1889. Answers, May 11, p. 380. When I was at Pentonville, a man in the same ward, who had got rather CHUMMY with his warder, asked him to post a letter to his friends in Manchester.
