chum

   American soldiers serving in Britain in the late 1940s became accustomed to being accosted by young children who invariably asked: ‘Got any gum, chum?’ ‘Chum’ appeared in the late seventeenth century and was originally university slang for a chamber-fellow. It is thought to derive from that expression, so perhaps should be ‘cham’. Technically, then, a chum is someone, another male, with whom a young man shares a room. In modern parlance he would be a flat-mate. But the word has been used since the eighteenth century in its more general sense of friend, and is used vocatively rather as that word is used. According to the tone of voice in which it is uttered, it can be either genuinely friendly or rather aggressive. Friendly usage occurs in, e.g., Doctor in the House, by Richard Gordon, The Half Hunter, by John Sherwood (where there is an example also of unfriendly usage), Henry’s War, by Jeremy Brooks, Room at the Top, by John Braine. ‘Old chum’ occasionally occurs. The diminutive ‘chummy’ is rare, but is to be found in N.J.Crisp’s Festival: ‘“Fuck the Professor,” Cramer said. “I’ve played in more theatres than he’s ever set foot in.” Or you, chummy, was the unspoken implication.’ The British actor Ian Carmichael reportedly addresses everyone as ‘chummy’.