June 5, 1997

bummer

Please explain the origins of the word/expression, "bummer."

The ultimate origin of bummer is uncertain, as with many interestingwords. I should also point out that there are two different words bummer, and the relationship between them is indirect at best.

The first bummer broadly means 'a person who bums; a beggar; bum'. This word, which has several related senses, is first found in the 1850s, and apparently comes from the German Bummler 'loafer'. It is now largely obsolete.

The second bummer, which I assume is the one you have in mind, means 'a terrifying or unpleasant experience induced by a hallucinogenic drug; bum trip', and hence 'anything that is unpleasant, difficult, dangerous, etc.'. Both senses arose in the late 1960s, as did the interjectional use bummer!

This bummer is probably formed from bum (trip), and the -er ending, or directly from bum (adjective) in the sense 'bad' (which is the origin of bum trip, in any case) with the same ending. This bum adjective derives from bum 'a contemptible or despicable person'; (also) 'a beggar'; the change in meaning from 'a contemptible person' to '(of anything) contemptible' is pretty straightforward. However, this bum is of uncertain origin.

The probable answer is that it is simply a shortening of the first bummer we discussed above. A difficulty with this conclusion is the existence of several earlier examples (going back to 1540 in Scots use) of bum in semantically related senses. The most likely explanation is that these earlier bum words are of different and unrelated origin, and all the bums we've been discussing stem from the 1850s German bummer.