Word: bum
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...wants to ride the rods or who does? The motorcar marked the passing of the trainride-stealing American bum, with his curious lingo. That there have never been a dozen masters in this profession is proved by the confusion of terms. To the next generation, the argot of the American hobo will be as incomprehensible as that of Villon's thieves, because apparently there is no one capable of setting them down now. Why doesn't TIME, for a time, open its columns to authoritative bum's language, so that the poets and novelists of future days...
...they ever change the bulbs, I wonder? In the lamps, I mean. Two bum out of three. No, there's three up there. You can feel. Pull the chains. One and two and three. Try the chains on the one down that end. Maybe they work in some kind of combination that they don't turn on in the morning. Try two at a time. You didn't pull together. It makes just one noise when you do. Listen...
...This is a word that might be spoken on the stage in so frank and veristic a production as The Front Page, but uttered at a decent dinner table it would impel a Victorian butler to practice on the loose-lipped guest what is technically known as the bum's rush...
Hallelujah, I'm a bum...
Hallelujah, bum again...