the word bum

[dreamerx1]

In the UK the word 'bum' is slang for buttocks. In late Victorian times would this expression still have been used by say a workhouse child; if not, what would be an alternative?

[Romeo]

Yes, the late Victorians would have used the word. As a corrupted version of bottom, its origin goes back a long way.

[jno]

the Cassell dictionary of slang says it was first recorded in 1387 and seems to have been standard English, rather than slang, for much of that time. In the 19th century it had become used much as now. But it can be hard to say who would have used it; the language of workhouse children isn't much recorded, novels being mostly middle-class things about middle-class people. Use it if it sounds ok to your ears; otherwise arse would probably do as well.

[Count_Emmup]

Although you probably weren't being intentionally heartless, I commend this link to you:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workhouses

When you' ve read it all it might make you more sympathetic in your choice of words, and thus avoid tossing in terms like 'workhouse child' so lightly and disparagingly.

.

[dreamerx1]

My choice of words is specific and accurate. I am writing a children's novel based in a workhouse of 1882. Having been raised myself in an orphanage (Dr Barnados) I think I can emphathise more than most with institutional life.

[Quizmonster]

'Bum' is not a corrupted version of 'bottom', which was never used to mean the buttocks before the 1790s. As J says above, 'bum' is at least four centuries older. Its actual source is from the idea of a protuberance or swelling, such as we find in the word 'bump' or in 'bumb', meaning a pimple, and the French verb 'bomber' meaning to bulge.
Having said all that, I'm pretty sure Victorian workhouse children would have happily used the word.

[Peter Pedant]

Didnt Dickens mention that one workhouse child was addressed as workus ?

What about urchin ?

[Peter Pedant]

I think Count Emmupis being a little censorious.

The workhouses may have been as described, but that in itself should not be grounds to write about something else. This is a throw back to Victorian attitudes. Lady Carlyle was similarly censorious about Hardy's Jude the Obscure (' no need to read about these things' or the like, but if you recollect the children did hang themselves, dun because we are too many)

If only nice things happened in novels then we would never have had Dickens.

[jno]

dreamer, I think you just have to invent a 'voice' for the character - nobody really knows exactly what they spoke like (Dickens may be as good a guide as any). Obviously you have to avoid anachronisms - no saying 'gimme five, bro!' because everyone knows, or feels, that this is modern - so your question was a good one. But apart from that it's up to the novelist to make it 'sound' plausible. Good luck!

[Count_Emmup]

I wasn't asking the questioner to write about something else, Mr Pedant - merely reqesting sympathy for the poor, benighted victims condemned to the horrors of the workhouse.

I inferred, (perhaps in hindsight erroneously), that the writer was a little scornful of the innocent victims of Victorian wealth disparity.

I don't understand the relevance of adressing a workhouse resident as "Workus" or "Urchin" to the original question about the familiarity or otherwise of such a resident with the word"Bum" either!