hummum

English

Etymology

From Arabic حَمَّام (ḥammām).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈhʌməm/

Noun

hummum (plural hummums)

1. A Turkish bath.
   • 1634, T[homas] H[erbert], A Relation of Some Yeares Travaile, Begunne Anno 1626. into Afrique and the Greater Asia, […], London: […] William Stansby, and Jacob Bloome, →OCLC:

     a curious summer-house, excelling all his other for prospect, painting, hummum, waterworks, and a forest which is stored with game of several sorts

   • 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 30, in The History of Pendennis. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC:

     Of all those knights and baronets, lords and gentlemen, bearing arms, whose escutcheons are painted upon the walls of the famous hall of the Upper Temple, was there no philanthropist good-natured enough to devise a set of Hummums for the benefit of the lawyers, his fellows and successors?

2. Alternative form of humhum (“towelling fabric”)

References

“hummum”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.