Also (while the Everything capitalization problem continues stumbling along) a street person, bag lady, homeless person or hobo.

Some people extend bum-i-tude as far as to apply to the idle and indolent (students, artists) and people on welfare as well.

To get something you don't have from somebody who does. Not to be confused with armed robbery.

bullschildt = B = bump

bum

1. vt. To make highly efficient, either in time or space, often at the expense of clarity. "I managed to bum three more instructions out of that code." "I spent half the night bumming the interrupt code." In 1996, this term and the practice it describes are semi-obsolete. In elder days, John McCarthy (inventor of LISP) used to compare some efficiency-obsessed hackers among his students to "ski bums"; thus, optimization became "program bumming", and eventually just "bumming". 2. To squeeze out excess; to remove something in order to improve whatever it was removed from (without changing function; this distinguishes the process from a featurectomy). 3. n. A small change to an algorithm, program, or hardware device to make it more efficient. "This hardware bum makes the jump instruction faster." Usage: now uncommon, largely superseded by v. tune (and n. tweak, hack), though none of these exactly capture sense 2. All these uses are rare in Commonwealth hackish, because in the parent dialects of English the noun `bum' is a rude synonym for `buttocks' and the verb `bum' for buggery.

--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, this entry manually entered by rootbeer277.

Bum (?), n. [Contr. fr. bottom in this sense.]

The buttock.

[Low]

Shak.

 

© Webster 1913.


Bum, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Bummed (); p. pr. & vb.n. Bumming ().] [See Boom, v. i., to roar.]

To make murmuring or humming sound.

Jamieson.

 

© Webster 1913.


Bum, n.

A humming noise.

Halliwell.

 

© Webster 1913.

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