Printer Friendly
Dictionary, Encyclopedia and Thesaurus - The Free Dictionary
1,762,894,587 visitors served.
forum mailing list For webmasters
?
New: Language forums
Dictionary/
thesaurus
Medical
dictionary
Legal
dictionary
Financial
dictionary
Acronyms
 
Idioms
Encyclopedia
Wikipedia
encyclopedia
?

bum
(redirected from layabout)

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Wikipedia 0.06 sec.
1.bum - To make highly efficient, either in time or space, often at the expense of clarity. "I managed to bum three more instructions out of that code." "I spent half the night bumming the interrupt code." In elder days, John McCarthy (inventor of Lisp) used to compare some efficiency-obsessed hackers among his students to "ski bums"; thus, optimisation became "program bumming", and eventually just "bumming".
2.bum - To squeeze out excess; to remove something in order to improve whatever it was removed from (without changing function; this distinguishes the process from a featurectomy).
3.bum - A small change to an algorithm, program, or hardware device to make it more efficient. "This hardware bum makes the jump instruction faster."

Usage: now uncommon, largely superseded by v. tune (and tweak, hack), though none of these exactly capture sense
4.bum - All these uses are rare in Commonwealth hackish, because in the parent dialects of English "bum" is a rude synonym for "buttocks".


How to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, add the site to iGoogle, or visit webmaster's page for free fun content.
?Page tools
Printer friendly
Cite / link
Email
Feedback
? Mentioned in ? References in periodicals archive
 
It's up to Clarrie to hold the family together, with the dubious help of their uncle Len, a good-hearted layabout, who spends his earnings as a ventriloquist on gambling and drink.
He saves some of his highest praise for Mykelti Williamson ("Forrest Gump", "Ali") who plays Uncle George, Rashad and Ant's layabout uncle.
The glitzy layabout Lois Magic is anything but enchanting, but Marlowe saves her from a murder frame-up by her cuckolded husband.
 
Encyclopedia browser? ? Full browser
 
 
Encyclopedia
?

Disclaimer | Privacy policy | Feedback | Copyright © 2009 Farlex, Inc.
All content on this website, including dictionary, thesaurus, literature, geography, and other reference data is for informational purposes only. This information should not be considered complete, up to date, and is not intended to be used in place of a Terms of Use.