chum up

present singular third person chums up · participle present chumming up · participle past chummed up · past chummed up

1. idiomaticinformalTo be friendly toward (with or to) someone, especially in an ingratiating way; to form a friendship (with).

   I chummed up with a few of my new work colleagues.

   4 more examples

   Having met Mr. Hodson many years at various shows, and “chummed up,” as naturally we should have, he invited me to go and see him at his home in Somersetshire.

   1876 March 16, “Mr. Greville Hodson the Poultry Judge at Home”, in Journal of Horticulture and Cottage Gardener, volume 30, page 221

   He said he met a stranger in a saloon last night, and that they chummed up together, and started in to make a night of it.

   1919, Frank L. Packard, From Now On, Toronto: Copp Clark, Book 3, Chapter 3, p. 163

   “[…] which would you rather do: be in with a lot of greasy mechanics and laboring-men, or chum up to a real fellow like Lord Wycombe, and get invited to his house for parties?”

   1922, Sinclair Lewis, chapter XXVI, in Babbitt, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Company, →OCLC, page 309

   ‘Were you in your basha just before you went on guard duty?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘With other chaps. Men you’d chummed up with?’ ‘Yes, sir.’

   2004, Andrea Levy, chapter 42, in Small Island, London: Review, page 396

2. UKobsoleteslangtransitiveTo initiate (a new prisoner) through a ritual involving beating him with sticks and swords, accompanied by music, to extort money from him.

   1849, John Brand, Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, revised by Henry Ellis, London: Henry G. Bohn, Volume 2, p. 452, Mr. Miller. They are not very nice whom they chum up? Boot. Not very; they would as soon chum you up as anybody else.

   1 more example

   They have a practice of “chumming up” a new fellow-prisoner—beating him with old swords and staves kept in the prison for the purpose, to exact a fee of a half-crown.

   1844 January 13, The Spectator, volume 17, number 811, page 28

3. To apply chum to water as bait.

   Synonyms: make friends

4. broadlyTo render a situation frenzied and confusing.