Word.ws English Dictionary

lum

/lʌm/

lum noun: a chimney; also, the top part of a chimney.

Noun (1)

lum (plural lums)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland) A chimney; also, the top part of a chimney.
    • Now, by this time, the ſun begins to leam, / An' litt the hill-heads, wi' his morning beam, / An' birds, and beaſts, and fouk to be aſteer, / And ſtreams o' reek frae lumb heads to appear; […]1768, Alexander Ross, “Canto I”, in The Fortunate Shepherdess, a Pastoral Tale; in Three Cantos, in the Scotish Dialect. […], Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire: […] Francis Douglas, →OCLC, page 50
    • He bleez'd ovvre her, an' ſhe ovvre him, / As they vvad never mair part, / Till, fuff! he ſtarted up the lum, / An' Jean had e'en a ſair heart / To ſee't that night.1785 (date written), Robert Burns, “Halloween”, in Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. […], 2nd edition, volume I, Edinburgh: […] T[homas] Cadell, […], and William Creech, […], published 1793...
    1. (Northern England, Scotland, specifically) A ventilating chimney over the shaft of a mine.

Noun (2)

lum (plural lums)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland, dialectal) A grove or wood; also, a woody valley.

Noun (3)

lum (plural lums)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland, dialectal) A deep pool, especially one in a riverbed.
    • The Kettle Wells are two lums, situated in Bonson's Wood, near Stanmore, which are not surpassed for Elysian beauty. The fall of the water into the first well is inconsiderable; but that continually empties itself into the lum below, over a smooth precipice of thirty feet.1830 September 4, W. H. H., “The ‘Lums’ of Westmoreland”, in The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, volume XVI, number 449, London: […] J[ohn] Limbird, […], →OCLC, page 188, column 2

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Lum

Lum (plural Lums)

  1. An English surname transferred from the place name.
    • Alternative forms: Limb, Lumb, Lumm
  2. A surname from Chinese.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Lum

Lum (plural Lums)

  1. A diminutive of the male given name Columbus.

Examples of lum in a sentence

  • Sae, I wad not trust mysell with another look at poor Woodend, for the very blue reek that came out of the lum-head pat me in mind of the change of market-days with us.1818 July 25, Jedediah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], chapter II, in Tales of My Landlord, Second Series, […] (The Heart of...
  • Down the broad lum / Came melting flakes that hiss'd upon the coal; / Under my eyelids blew the blinding smoke, / And for a time I sat like one bewitch'd, / Still as a stone.1865 March, [Robert Williams Buchanan], “Willie Baird: A Winter Idyll”, in The Cornhill Magazine, volume XI, number 63, London: Smith...

Forms of lum

Noun
plurallums
alternative formlumb
Proper noun
pluralLums

Plural of lum: lums

Origin of lum

Borrowed from Scots lum, Early Scots lumb; further etymology uncertain, but probably from Cumbric *lümon, related to Welsh llumon (“chimney”) (obsolete), from Proto-Celtic *loimono. Possibly at least influenced by Old French lum (“light”), lume (“cooking fire”) (compare French lumière (“light; cavity or channel within a tube or tubular organ, lumen; opening”)), from Latin lūmen (“light; light source; opening through which light can penetrate such as an air-hole or window; opening or orifice in a water-pipe or funnel”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *lewk- (“bright; to see; to shine”).

Uncertain; perhaps related to Old Norse lundr (“clump of trees, grove; (rare) tree”) (compare Danish lund (“grove”), Norwegian Bokmål lund, Norwegian Nynorsk lund (“grove”), Swedish lund (“grove”)).

Unknown. The Dictionary of the Scots Language (in their entry on Scots lum (“downpour”)) mentions a dialectal Middle English word lum(b) (“water hole in a mire; deep pool”) and suggests it might ultimately be related to lum (“chimney”).

Words formed from lum

Phrases with lum

Words that rhyme with lum

42 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about lum

What does lum mean?
Lum means a chimney; also, the top part of a chimney.
How do you use lum in a sentence?
Sae, I wad not trust mysell with another look at poor Woodend, for the very blue reek that came out of the lum-head pat me in mind of the change of market-days with us.
What part of speech is lum?
Lum can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce lum?
Lum is pronounced /lʌm/ (UK).
What is the plural of lum?
The plural of lum is lums.

Words near lum in the dictionary

  1. lulziest
  2. lulziness
  3. lulztastic
  4. lulzworthy
  5. lulzy
  6. lum
  7. luma
  8. lumacaftor
  9. lumacell
  10. lumache
  11. lumachel

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lum (page history and authors); Lum (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-uk-lum.wav.

Cite this entry: “lum.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lum. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.