chummery

English

Etymology

chum +‎ -ery

Noun

chummery (plural chummeries)

1. (India, historical) The building in which unmarried British army officers were quartered during the British Raj.
   • 1966, Paul Scott, "The Jewel in the Crown" in The Raj Quartet, 1966-1975.

     Close by, but only to be glimpsed through the gateway in a high stucco wall, similarly shaded, is the bungalow once known as the chummery where three of four of Mr White's unmarried sub-divisional officers - usually Indians of the uncovenanted provincial civil service - used to live when not on tour in their own allotted areas of the district.

2. (South Asia) The shared home of a group of men who are unmarried or working at a distance from their families.
   • 1887, Rudyard Kipling, “In the Pride of His Youth”, in Plain Tales from the Hills‎^[1], published 1888:

     Dicky could not afford living in the chummery, modest as it was. He had to explain this before he moved to a single room next the office where he worked all day.

   • 1934 October, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter 5, in Burmese Days, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, →OCLC:

     His first six months in Burma he had spent in Rangoon, where he was supposed to be learning the office side of his business. He had lived in a "chummery" with four other youths who devoted their entire energies to debauchery.

   • 1994, Business World, Vol. 14, Ananda Bazar Patrika Ltd., p. 159, [2]

     Chummeries are extremely conducive to the great yuppie pursuit of networking.

   • 2007, Henry Jayasēna, The Play is the Thing, Sri Lanka: Vijitha Yapa Publications, p. 27, [3]

     Many of us being bachelors, lived in rented out dilapidated old houses which were called "chummeries". The men from Jaffna, whether married or not, also lived in their own chummeries—mostly around Wellawatte, Dehiwala and Ratmalana.

   • 2011, Cecilia Leong-Salobir, chapter 1, in Food Culture in Colonial Asia: A Taste of Empire, Routledge, page 36:

     Where single men lived together in a household, known as a chummery, the head servant or khansamah took charge over the food preparation.

   • 2012, Michael B. Miller, Europe and the Maritime World: A Twentieth-Century History‎^[4], Cambridge University Press, Part One, Chapter 3, p. 115:

     At his arrival in Rangoon, Braund is greeted by five chums from his London office days. […] His accommodations are in a sixth floor chummery, or company bachelor housing, which he shares with five other assistants. This is a dump, and junior assistants with more time in Rangoon board in a somewhat more regal chummery known as "The Gin Palace."