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🧑‍🤝‍🧑 A close friend 🪱 Fish bait 🐟 A Pacific salmon 🪱 To throw bait 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 To spend time
to chum

to chum

1 8.2
To scatter chopped fish or meat in water to attract fish
  • verb
  • /tʃʌm/
  • Specialized
translation icon : cebar
  • Fishermen often chum the water to lure in a bigger catch.
  • chum the water

Examples

  • Zayder had never developed a reliable way of calling them, except to chum the water with blood.

    Fiction book (1997)

  • I thought it was illegal to chum the water.

    47 Meters Down (2017)

  • I'm gonna chum the water with your head.

    Surf's Up (2007)

  • Get a boat, chum the water, and rescue the seals.

    Seal Team (2021)

  • - Like sharks to chum bait.

    Natural Born Killers (1994)

  • Here in the manly man east, they chum with fish guts.

    Blog text (22)

  • It will also chum out seal blood.

    Deep Blue Sea 3 (2020)

  • We were trolling as the sea and wind were too rough to drift and chum.

    Blog text (27)

  • They chum the waters, attracting sharks, in the hopes of hooking them.

    Envoy: Shark Cull (2021)

  • To attract more fish, the angler decided to chum the water with fish scraps.

Idioms

chum in the water
  • Informal
9.8

Exposed and easy for others to attack or criticize

Phrasal Verbs

to chum up
  • UK
1 7.7

To make friends with someone by talking and being kind

Compounds

bum chum
  • UK
1 9.9

A close friend you do many things with

chum salmon
  • Specialized
1 6.3

A large Pacific fish with small spots on its back that people eat

How Much

to scatter
187 2.8
to chum
  • Specialized
1 8.2
sprinkle
26 1.5

Surface Forms

chum infinitive
chummed past
chummed past participle
chumming present participle
chums third person singular

Etymology

Chum. The verb to chum (to scatter bait) comes from the noun chum for chopped fish used as bait, because fishermen would throw that bait into the water to 'attract' fish. That is why to chum the water means to spread bait to lure fish.