gum
Pluralgums (some meanings)
Pluralgums (some meanings)
- 1A sweet, flexible substance that people chew for flavor without swallowing.
The dentist warned that sugary gum can damage teeth over time.
Spitting gum onto the sidewalk is frowned upon in many cities.
- 2The firm flesh surrounding the base of the teeth in the mouth.
Receding gums can expose the sensitive roots of the teeth.
The dentist injected anesthetic into the gum before drilling.
Note
This gum is a different word from the plant substance and its many offshoots. It comes from Old English gōma, "palate," and further back from a root meaning "to gape, yawn." German Gaumen, "palate," is a cousin. In everyday speech it usually appears in the plural, as in bleeding gums or receding gums. The singular suits one spot in the mouth, such as the place a dentist numbs before drilling.
- 3An individual piece of chewing gum.
He handed each child a gum after dinner.
She unwrapped a fresh gum and started chewing.
Note
Here the mass noun of chewing gum becomes countable, so people ask for "a gum" the way they would ask for a mint. Zadie Smith's On Beauty (2005) uses it naturally: "Levi unwrapped a gum and put it in his mouth." The fuller "a piece of gum" remains the more neutral choice, but the count use is everyday and unmarked.
- 4To interfere with how something works, making a thing or process run poorly.
Bureaucratic delays gum the entire hiring pipeline.
Grease and grime gummed the delicate mechanism beyond repair.
Similarclog, jam, foul, hamper, choke
Note
This is the clogging sense, and in practice it almost always takes up. Cheap oil gums up valves, and fussy edits gum up an article. The literal picture of residue fouling a mechanism carries over to processes and prose. The sense is colloquial, so in formal writing obstruct or hamper is the safer choice.
That cheap oil will gum up the engine valves.
The new editor can gum up your article with too many commas.
- 5A thick, water-soluble substance that oozes from certain plants and hardens as it dries.
Acacia trees produce a gum used in food and medicine.
The dried gum formed amber-colored beads along the trunk.
Similarresin
Note
Botanists and biochemists reserve the word for a water-soluble carbohydrate. Water solubility is what sets true gum apart within the mixed exudates some plants produce: gum-oleo-resin names such a mixture by its parts. Gum arabic is the classic pure case. The word reached English through Latin gummi and Greek kómmi from Egyptian qmy, "anointing oil," and Spanish goma, "rubber," descends from the same source.
- 6Any thick or sticky substance that resembles true plant gum.
Over time, a sticky gum collected inside the engine valves.
The label left a stubborn gum on the glass after she peeled it off.
Note
The looser use of the word covers anything that merely looks or behaves like true gum, as in gum benzoin. It reaches well beyond the laboratory. John Kennedy's Geordie Chalmers (1833) has someone "becoomed wi' the gum o' the coal-hill," meaning smeared with the sticky grime of a coal heap. In this sense, gum names a texture rather than a chemistry.
- 7A tree of various kinds, such as the eucalyptus, that exudes a sticky sap.
A flock of parrots roosted in the old gum by the river.
The bushfire swept through stands of towering gums.
Similareucalyptus
- 8To chew, especially with the gums when teeth are absent.
The old dog gummed the treat slowly, having lost most of its teeth.
Toothless infants gum whatever you hand them.
Similarchew
- 9To apply glue or a sticky substance to something, making it sticky.
He gummed the edges of the poster and smoothed it onto the wall.
Bookbinders gum the spine to hold the pages together.
Note
Adding up stresses that the coating is thorough, but it also pushes the verb toward the sense of clogging. Julie Hedgepeth Williams's A Rare Titanic Family (2012) sits right on that boundary: a lifeboat lever "gummed up with red paint" is literally coated and practically jammed. Without up, the verb usually means deliberate gluing, as when someone gums an envelope flap or the edges of a poster.
- 10To stiffen something, such as fabric, with glue or gum.
Hatmakers gum the brim so it stays rigid.
The linen was gummed and pressed until it stood stiff on its own.
Note
This is a craftsman's sense, for fabric given body with gum, and it is old enough for Shakespeare. In The First Part of Henry the Fourth (c. 1597), a character "frets like a gummed velvet." The image is of stiffened cloth chafing and wearing away, with a play on fretting in the sense of worrying. Today the sense survives mainly in trades such as hatmaking and bookbinding.
- 11A soft, chewy gelatin candy, frequently molded into shapes such as bears or worms.
These candies are a chewy gum flavored with real fruit juice.
Children lined up for handfuls of colorful gum at the fair.
Note
This is a South African usage. Gums there are the soft, chewy gummi candies, and the word usually appears in the plural, as in a bag of gums. Readers from other regions are likely to picture chewing gum instead. When writing for an international audience, the unambiguous choice is gummi candy.
- 12A rubber overshoe worn to protect footwear from rain and mud.
Farmers kept their gums by the back porch for rainy mornings.
She slipped a gum over each shoe before crossing the flooded yard.
Similargalosh, overshoe, rubber
Note
Rubber is the link between this sense and the others. The Latin gummi that gave Spanish goma, "rubber," stands behind this US dialect word for the overshoe itself. Overshoes come in pairs, so the plural gums is the form most often heard, as when a farmer pulls on his gums before a muddy walk. Outside the regions that use it, overshoe is the clearer word.
- 13To attach something into a sequence in a clumsy, awkward manner.
The editor gummed an unrelated chapter into the middle of the book.
Programmers sometimes gum extra features into code without much thought.
Note
This is a sense of contempt, usually paired with together. George Orwell gave it its sharpest use in Politics and the English Language (1946), describing bad prose as "gumming together long strips of words" that someone else had already arranged. The verb implies that the joins show and that the result was pasted up rather than composed.
- 14A beehive made from a section of a hollow gum tree, or any roughly built hive.
Bees swarmed around the weathered gum behind the barn.
He built a row of gums from hollow logs to house his bees.
Note
A Southern US dialect word that names the hive after its wood. A section of hollow gum tree, the tree itself, made a ready home for bees. The meaning then loosened, so that any roughly made hive could be called a gum, whatever it was built from. Because it is regional, the word reads as local color, and readers elsewhere may need it explained.
- 15A hollow log, or a section of one, used as a container or bin for storing things.
Grandma kept her flour in an old gum carved from a tree trunk.
The settlers used gums to store grain through the winter.
Note
The hollow-log craft behind the bee gum also produced storage: a hollowed trunk turned into a bin for grain or flour. Like the hive, this sense belongs to Southern US dialect. In writing, it suits regional dialogue or description better than neutral prose, where vessel or bin would be the safer word.
- 16To restore a worn saw by deepening and widening the gaps between its teeth, for example with a gummer.
The mill hand gummed each saw whose teeth had grown shallow.
Before resharpening, they gum the blade to restore the gullets.
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Practice
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Origins
From Middle English gome, from Old English gōma ("palate"), which comes through Proto-Germanic from a Proto-Indo-European root *ǵʰeh₂w- ("to gape, yawn"). It is related to German Gaumen and Old Norse gómr.
From Middle English gomme, borrowed via Anglo-Norman gome and Late Latin gumma from Latin gummi, which came from Ancient Greek κόμμι (kómmi), itself from Egyptian qmy ("anointing oil") and qmyt ("gum, resin"). It is cognate with Spanish goma ("rubber").