Word.ws English Dictionary

bummery

bummery noun: the faction of the Industrial Workers of the World in the 20th century which favored direct action. Also the obsolete form of bottomry.

Noun

bummery (uncountable)

  1. (historical) The faction of the Industrial Workers of the World in the 20th century which favored direct action.
    • When De Leon broke with the I. W. W. in 1908 there were again members of the Party who declaimed against his abandoning the I. W. W. - members who had no sympathy with the bummery element.1924, Proceedings of the National Convention of the Socialist Labor Party, page 36
    • But the hour belonged to the bummery. Proclaiming a millennial vision of “One Big Union,” the hobo insurgents won the day, ousting the home-guard and dedicating the IWW to direct economic action exclusively.2010, Todd DePastino, Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America, page 95

Also used as

bummery is also the obsolete form of bottomry.

Origin of bummery

From bum + -ery and the idea that they were a collective of bums?

Variant form.

Questions about bummery

What does bummery mean?
Bummery means the faction of the Industrial Workers of the World in the 20th century which favored direct action.
What part of speech is bummery?
Bummery is a noun.

Words near bummery in the dictionary

  1. bummed out
  2. bummelo
  3. bummelos
  4. bummer
  5. bummers
  6. bummery
  7. bummest
  8. bummier
  9. bummies
  10. bummiest
  11. bumming

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bummery (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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