chum up
Verb
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Verb
chum up
- (idiomatic, informal) To 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.
- 1876, “Mr. Greville Hodson the Poultry Judge at Home,” Journal of Horticulture and Cottage Gardener, Volume 30, 16 March, 1876, p. 221,
- 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.
- 1919, Frank L. Packard, From Now On, Toronto: Copp Clark, Book 3, Chapter 3, p. 163,
- 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.
- 1922, Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (novel), New York: Harcourt Brace, Chapter 26, p. 309,
- “ […] 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?”
- 2004, Andrea Levy, Small Island (novel), London: Review, Chapter 42, p. 396,
- ‘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.’
- (obsolete, UK, prison slang, transitive) To initiate (a new prisoner) through a ritual involving beating him with sticks and swords, accompanied by music, to extort money from him.
- 1844, The Spectator, Volume 17, No. 811, 13 January, 1844, p. 28,
- 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.
- 1849, John Brand (antiquarian), Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, revised by Henry Ellis (librarian), 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.
- 1844, The Spectator, Volume 17, No. 811, 13 January, 1844, p. 28,
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