Word.ws English Dictionary

common as bums

common as bums adjective: very common or mundane (in various senses).

Adjective

common as bums (not comparable)

  1. (Australia, US, colloquial, simile) Very common or mundane (in various senses).
    • Bruises and bumps in the Kentucky camp were as common as bums at a free barbecue.1938 October 25, “Wildcats Fall Before Xavier 26-7 at Cincy”, in The Kentucky Kernel, volume 29, number 12, Lexington, Kentucky, page 1
    • He made a face. "What for? You don't want a vineyard there. They're as common as bums; everybody's got one."1958, D'Arcy Niland, Call Me when the Cross Turns Over, Angus & Robertson, →ISBN, White Lion Publishers, →ISBN, page 104

Examples of common as bums in a sentence

  • Fistfights were as common as bums and people abandoned their picnic blankets to make room for the combatants.2011 March 15, David Butler, “Almanac Rugby League – The making of a Swannies fan”, in The Footy Almanac, archived from the original on 26...
  • Going by what I see in the changing room at my gym these days, they are now purely ornamental – and as common as bums.2014 June 7, Alicia Dawson, The Sydney Morning Herald, archived from the original on 18 Nov 2023, Tatts take over:
  • "These kinds of thefts are common as bums at a soup kitchen," Ed said, yawning.2016, Joe Ide, IQ, page 296:

Synonyms of common as bums

14 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Questions about common as bums

What does common as bums mean?
Common as bums means very common or mundane (in various senses).
How do you use common as bums in a sentence?
Fistfights were as common as bums and people abandoned their picnic blankets to make room for the combatants.
What part of speech is common as bums?
Common as bums is an adjective.

Words near common as bums in the dictionary

  1. common antilogarithm
  2. common antilogarithms
  3. common antilogs
  4. common area
  5. common areas
  6. common as bums
  7. common as dirt
  8. common as muck
  9. common as pig tracks
  10. common ash
  11. common ashes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: common as bums (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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