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Glite Dictionary
bum's rush

bum's rush

2 9.5
A quick, rude way to make someone leave
  • noun
  • /bʌmz rʌʃ/
  • Archaic
translation icon : desalojo brusco
  • The segment didn't go as well as expected, and when it was over and I was giving him the bum's rush out the door, he had the nerve to ask me how he could have done better.
  • give him the bum's rush
  • got the bum's rush

Examples

  • Feeling unwelcome, she quickly received the bum's rush from the club's bouncers.

  • After causing a scene, he was met with a bum's rush from the event staff.

  • Well, looks to me as if the Professor will give us the bum's rush and run this whole show himself.

    Wilson (1944)

  • In the factory, we called this 'the bum's rush.'

    Blog text (27)

  • What we see is that the Wiki-commissars gave this article the bum's rush.

    Blog text (28)

  • Again, the third-party candidate for Congress gets the bum's rush from a venue other politicians get to hang out at.

    Blog text (8)

  • You've already been given the bum's rush off your position about disaster relief, likewise self-responsibility.

    Blog text (13)

  • As I noted, the raison d'être of these security guards is to administer the bum's rush.

    Blog text (13)

  • On 7 October, a judge of the US Court of Appeals in Washington DC accused the NRC of giving a "bum's rush" to a citizens group concerned with the safety of relicensing Maryland's Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant, located on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay.

    Academic text (1999)

  • The security guard gave the intruder the bum's rush and threw him out of the building.

How Abrupt

bum's rush
  • Archaic
2 9.5
to show the door
  • Informal
6 6.7
to send away
43 3.0
to usher out
3 5.1

Surface Forms

bum's rush singular
bum's rushes plural

Morphology

bum's + rush

The sense 'a hasty or forceful dismissal' is not transparently derivable from the constituents: while 'rush' evokes haste, the possessive 'bum's' (a slang/ambiguous noun) does not clearly indicate being ejected or dismissed. The phrase is idiomatic and its specific pragmatic sense is unpredictable for a B1 learner even if they know the individual words.

Etymology

Bum's rush may come from old saloons, where a bum, a homeless or drunk person, was grabbed and quickly given a rush out the door. That's why the phrase now means 'a hasty or forceful dismissal'.