corporate welfare bum
corporate welfare bum noun: a business corporation or business executive receiving significant financial assistance from government sources.
Noun
corporate welfare bum (plural corporate welfare bums)
- A business corporation or business executive receiving significant financial assistance from government sources.
- [A]nother $8 million went to keep alive Quebecair, a corporate welfare bum if ever there was one.1983 April 29, "End welfare dithering," Montreal Gazette (Canada), p. B-2 (retrieved 9 Nov 2015)
- Meanwhile: every telecomm company is as big a corporate welfare bum as you could ask for.2011, Cory Doctorow, Context, →ISBN, page 113
Forms of corporate welfare bum
| plural | corporate welfare bums |
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Origin of corporate welfare bum
Coined in 1972 by Canadian labor leader and politician David Lewis (1909-1981). The term postdates welfare bum: it represents a blend of corporate welfare + welfare bum.
Questions about corporate welfare bum
- What does corporate welfare bum mean?
- Corporate welfare bum means a business corporation or business executive receiving significant financial assistance from government sources.
- What part of speech is corporate welfare bum?
- Corporate welfare bum is a noun.
- What is the plural of corporate welfare bum?
- The plural of corporate welfare bum is corporate welfare bums.
Words near corporate welfare bum in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: corporate welfare bum (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-corporate welfare bum.ogg.
Cite this entry: “corporate welfare bum.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/corporate_welfare_bum. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.