Marcus in Kingsport, Tennessee, says that as children, if he and his sister left snacks or crumbs around the kitchen, his mother would say in exasperation that all the kids ever wanted to do was to mess and gaum. The word gaum means “a greasy...
When Matt was growing up in western North Carolina, he heard the word gaum, also spelled gom, meaning a mess. Someone misbehaving might be described as gauming around, or something was gaumed up, meaning messed up, or a person was dismissed as...
Sondra, calling from Columbus, Georgia, remembered her mother saying don’t be messing and gauming with that, usually about food. The phrase means dawdling, puttering, or getting into trouble and is heard primarily in the US South. The gauming part...