Citations:gaum

"pay attention to"?

 * 1923, A Lancashire Anthology: Selected and Edited (by May Yates), page 159:
 * Aw've bin i' trouble ever sin,
 * Id doesn't matter wheear aw've been,
 * Id's tellin' tales booath neet an day,
 * My wife ne'er gaums me whod aw say.
 * Th' clock's always reet, awm' always wrong,

"suppose"

 * 1828, William Carr, The dialect of Craven, Dialogue II, page 320:
 * Giles. "Thou's far deeper red i'th' scripture, ner I gaum'd the to be."
 * Brid. "I've oft heeard our parson talk thus fray't pulpit; an, God be thank'd, I've a gay good memory, an I's gaily practis'd wee't hevin feaful strang bouts wi' ye Methodies."
 * 1873, John Harland and T. T. Wilkinson, Lancashire Legends:
 * What t' farreps, mon, dost gaum [suppose] us chaps as tears t' guts eawt o' th' eairth

"smear"

 * 1901, Henry Wallace Phillips, A Matter of Authority, in McClure's Magazine, volume 16, page 447:
 * "There's your can of surup, pardner," I says; "pour it in my hair." So he done it. I handed him a piece of bacon-rind. "Gaum her around," I says. An' he done that, too.
 * 1916, in Pearson's Magazine, volumes 35-36, page 382:
 * Mr. Henry F. Lippett, representing the culture of the New England cotton mill owners and prancing into the Senate chamber with a wolf's skin wrapped about his loins and his body gaumed over with alternate stripes of ochre and red keel.
 * 1975, Documents on Art and Taste in Australia: The Colonial Period, 1770-1914, page 122:
 * he combed his thick shock of wool with some pain to himself, then gaumed it with grease and rubbed some fat over his visage,
 * 1983, Goldenseal, volume 9, page 28:
 * The preacher said, "She gaums her face With powder, like a strumpet."

variant and synonym of "gorm" : "gape"

 * 1882, Hardwicke Rawnsley, Reminiscences of Wordsworth:
 * and in later times folks would stare and gaum to see him pass,
 * 2011, Andrew Martin, The Somme Stations ISBN 0571271863, page 113:
 * "What are you gaumin&apos; at?"

"trap"?

 * 1921, Honoré Willsie, The Pinto Stallion, in Everybody's Magazine, volume 45, page 20:
 * I'll try to head him back toward this drift and we'll see if we can gaum him in it.

???

 * 1901, Hamlin Garland, Her Mountain Lover, page 145:
 * He urged the horse about the court, trying to guide him, cow-boy fashion, by pressing the rein across the neck; but the horse only gaumed. "Not a blame thing ! I don't suppose there 's a horse in England knows the cross-neck rein. You can't do any high-class riding while you rein like a drayman."

variant of "gum"

 * 1922, Eugene Manlove Rhodes, Copper Streak Trail, page 64:
 * "Then is every play I make — henceforth and forever, amen — to be gaumed up by a mess of hirelin' bandogs?"

"gum, make sticky"???

 * 2007, Jeffrey Wallace, Dark Hollow, page 187:
 * Jenny can see the leather in her mind's eye, feel the soft silk of the untanned side. The tanginess of it gaums her mouth from memory, from chewing on a belt when she was younger, the way small balls and string of the material turned to jell in her mouth before dissolving into nothing.

"make sticky"

 * 1687, John Cleveland, The works of Mr. John Cleveland: containing his poems, page 260:
 * But as Luck would have it the Parson said Grace,
 * And to frisking and dancing they shuffled apace,
 * Each Lad took his Lass by the Fist,
 * And when he had squeez'd her, and gaum'd her until
 * The Fat of her Face ran down like a Mill,
 * Leicestershire Words, Phrases, and Proverbs, volume 17 (1881), page 158, explains that gaum in this citation means "make sticky"

something to do with kissing? or fawning?

 * perhaps "make sticky", cf the Cleveland citation of that sense; or perhaps "fawned over" or "gaped at"


 * 1827, Kissing the Bride (a letter to the editor, from Massachusetts), in The Casket, Or, Flowers of Literature, Wit & Sentiment, page 227:
 * I pitied my poor husband, poor man, to be obliged to stand and look on as silly as a fool, and see his new married wife gaumed over.

noun: (India) ??? (some sort of person)

 * 1836 August 15, Extract India Revenue Consulations, published in Papers relative to the cultivation of the tea plant in British India (1839):
 * By this means Mr Bruce obtained information that tea was growing at Jagundoo, further down the Burra Dehing. To this place he proceeded forthwith in a canoe manned by Singfos, and on his arrival, persuaded the gaum to set about clearing the tea trees from the low pingle and creepers amongst which they were buried.
 * 1858, Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, volume 36, page 43:
 * Our driver accordingly drew up, and sent into the gaum to request their attendance ; and in the meantime — taking all our anxious injunctions to make haste quite leisurely — he sat himself down on the roadside,
 * 1929, Tea and Coffee Trade Journal, volume 56, page 388:
 * Major Bruce disposed of the balance of his merchandise and set out upon his return journey after making a contract with the gaum to have a quantity of tea plants ready for him to take away with him the following year.
 * 1963, Dinakar Dhondo Karve, The New Brahmans: Five Maharashtrian Families, page 234:
 * [I persuaded the] gaum to teach Hindi to me and to anybody else that cared to learn.


 * Awadh in revolt, 1857-1858: a study of popular resistance glosses it as "clan", but this doesn't fit some of the citations above.

noun: (rare, dialectal or colloquial) a useless, gauming person(?)

 * 1951, James Reynolds, The Grand Wide Way, page 176:
 * The new boy, Denis Cony, was a lad with a way with him. Overnight he became as much of a favourite with Timsey as the unfortunate gaum of a Gorgon had been "an insult and an injury."