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Gum   /gəm/   Listen
noun
Gum  n.  The dense tissues which invest the teeth, and cover the adjacent parts of the jaws.
Gum rash (Med.), strophulus in a teething child; red gum.
Gum stick, a smooth hard substance for children to bite upon while teething.


Gum  n.  
1.
A vegetable secretion of many trees or plants that hardens when it exudes, but is soluble in water; as, gum arabic; gum tragacanth; the gum of the cherry tree. Also, with less propriety, exudations that are not soluble in water; as, gum copal and gum sandarac, which are really resins.
2.
(Bot.) See Gum tree, below.
3.
A hive made of a section of a hollow gum tree; hence, any roughly made hive; also, a vessel or bin made of a hollow log. (Southern U. S.)
4.
A rubber overshoe. (Local, U. S.)
Black gum, Blue gum, British gum, etc. See under Black, Blue, etc.
Gum Acaroidea, the resinous gum of the Australian grass tree (Xanlhorrhoea).
Gum animal (Zool.), the galago of West Africa; so called because it feeds on gums. See Galago.
Gum animi or animé. See Anime.
Gum arabic, a gum yielded mostly by several species of Acacia (chiefly A. vera and A. Arabica) growing in Africa and Southern Asia; called also gum acacia. East Indian gum arabic comes from a tree of the Orange family which bears the elephant apple.
Gum butea, a gum yielded by the Indian plants Butea frondosa and B. superba, and used locally in tanning and in precipitating indigo.
Gum cistus, a plant of the genus Cistus (Cistus ladaniferus), a species of rock rose.
Gum dragon. See Tragacanth.
Gum elastic, Elastic gum. See Caoutchouc.
Gum elemi. See Elemi.
Gum juniper. See Sandarac.
Gum kino. See under Kino.
Gum lac. See Lac.
Gum Ladanum, a fragrant gum yielded by several Oriental species of Cistus or rock rose.
Gum passages, sap receptacles extending through the parenchyma of certain plants (Amygdalaceae, Cactaceae, etc.), and affording passage for gum.
Gum pot, a varnish maker's utensil for melting gum and mixing other ingredients.
Gum resin, the milky juice of a plant solidified by exposure to air; one of certain inspissated saps, mixtures of, or having properties of, gum and resin; a resin containing more or less mucilaginous and gummy matter.
Gum sandarac. See Sandarac.
Gum Senegal, a gum similar to gum arabic, yielded by trees (Acacia Verek and A. Adansoniä) growing in the Senegal country, West Africa.
Gum tragacanth. See Tragacanth.
Gum water, a solution of gum, esp. of gum arabic, in water.
Gum wood, the wood of any gum tree, esp. the wood of the Eucalyptus piperita, of New South Wales.


verb
Gum  v. t.  To deepen and enlarge the spaces between the teeth of (a worn saw). See Gummer.


Gum  v. t.  (past & past part. gummed; pres. part. gumming)  
1.
To smear with gum; to close with gum; to unite or stiffen by gum or a gumlike substance; to make sticky with a gumlike substance. "He frets like a gummed velvet."
2.
To chew with the gums, rather than with the teeth.
gum up
(a)
To block or clog (a conduit) with or as if with gum; as, to gum up the drainpipe.
(b)
to interfere with; to spoil. (Slang)


Gum  v. i.  To exude or form gum; to become gummy.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Gum" Quotes from Famous Books



... afforded an opportunity of picking up a few curios, such as saws from the nose of a saw-fish, sirrhi-boxes, gongs, old china jars, Java sarongs, and so forth. We were also shown two large heaps of gum from the interior, lying on the seashore ready for shipment. Then we took a few photographs, including one of a house on piles, and another of a long Borneo house, in which many families live under one roof, with separate entrances for each family. Afterwards we strolled slowly on up ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... position by two slabs set on edge and firmly imbedded in the floor. A horizontal flue is thus formed in which the fire is built. The upper stone, whose surface is to receive the thin guyave batter, undergoes during its original preparation a certain treatment with fire and pion gum, and perhaps other ingredients, which imparts to it a highly polished black finish. This operation is usually performed away from the pueblo, near a point where suitable stone is found, and is accompanied ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... doorway, watched the throngs enviously. There were men in that crowd who chewed gum, there were men who wore white satin ties with imitation diamond stick-pins, there were men who, having smoked seven-tenths of a cigar, were eating the remainder: but there was not one with whom he would not at that moment ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... like an archaic Greek or early Egyptian figure. Queen of the night behind, and of the gods around, and of the city below—here, if at all, you think, may one find the answer to the riddle. Her ostensible message, burning in the firmament beside her, is that we should buy pepsin chewing-gum. But there is more, not to be given in words, ineffable. Suddenly, when she has surveyed mankind, she closes her left eye. Three times she winks, and then vanishes. No ordinary winks these, but portentous, terrifyingly steady, obliterating a great tract of the sky. Hour ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... at half-past nine; small plains alternate with a flat forest country, slightly timbered; melon-holes; marly concretions, a stiff clayey soil, beautifully grassed: the prevailing timber trees are Bastard box, the Moreton Bay ash, and the Flooded Gum. After travelling seven miles, in a north-west direction, we came on a dense Myal scrub, skirted by a chain of shallow water-holes. The scrub trending towards, and disappearing in, the S. W.: the Loranthus and the Myal in immense bushes; ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt


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