Bummer Origins

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Vincent from Juneau, Alaska.

Hi, Vincent. Welcome.

Hey, welcome to the program.

Yes, I remember a few years back when I was working for a supervisor here in Alaska. Apparently, she made a mistake in setting up calendars for me to work with. And she would say, oh my, this is a bummer. And I’m like, what is a bummer? A bummer? B-U-M-M-E-R?

Yeah.

So you were working…

I’ve been curious about where the world came from, and, you know, is it a slang or proper English? So the circumstances where you were working alongside somebody, she made a mistake on a, it sounds like a shared calendar, and then she’s like, oh, bummer, right?

Yeah.

It’s kind of a tone of disappointment when she said it, probably, right?

Yeah.

And Vincent, I have to ask, are you originally from Alaska?

Originally, I’m from Africa. I’ve been here since 1982.

Kenya, Nigeria, something like that?

Yes, yes. I’m from the southern part of Nigeria, yes. Lafayette.

So we’re talking about the word bummer, which you heard is a mode of disappointment, or kind of an interjection, something you’d say if something doesn’t go quite right.

Okay.

You wouldn’t say bummer if someone dies. You don’t go, oh, yeah, bummer.

Good point.

But you might say bummer if your ice cream cone falls on the ground. You might say, oh, bummer, right? Because it’s a small disappointment, not a big one.

There’s a lot of great history about bummer. There really is. And it takes a lot of different paths. But the short version is that when it first appears in English, it comes to us from German where there’s a word bummler, B-U-M-M-L-E-R, and the English doesn’t have that L. And it means a loafer or drifter. They said it is a person who moves from place to place, a vagrant and doesn’t do a lot of work and probably is kind of shiftless and doesn’t have like a career or a life much.

And then after that, it’s shortened at some point pretty quickly to a bum. So as we know it today, right? And from there, the negative connotation of that, I mean, clearly nobody wants to be said not to be a worker or to be kind of lazy, right? The negative connotations stick with bum, and it starts appearing by the late 1960s. This is more than 100 years after bumler first shows up in English. And by the 1960s, bum starts being attached to other words in things like bum deal or bum rap or bum trip. And then by the late 1960s, bum is re-enlarged back out to bummer. And this is the best speculation of language researchers. And it used to mean, as you heard it, something disheartening or disappointing or something kind of small but bad that just happened.

How does that sound?

Very, very, very good.

So, Vincent, that’s the way your friend used it, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, I’m so glad. You guys are awesome. I listened to the program quite often. Vincent, thanks so much for giving us a call, and thanks for being such a dedicated listener. We really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. You guys are awesome.

All right, bye.

Thank you.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Okay, bye-bye.

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