chummery

Noun

chummery (plural chummeries)

1. (India, historical) The building in which unmarried British army officers were quartered during the British Raj.
   • 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...1966, Paul Scott, "The Jewel in the Crown" in The Raj Quartet, 1966-1975.
2. (South-Asia) The shared home of a group of men who are unmarried or working at a distance from their families.
   • 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.1887, Rudyard Kipling, “In the Pride of His Youth”, in Plain Tales from the Hills, published 1888
   • 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.1934 October, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter 5, in Burmese Days, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, →OCLC