bumboat

American

[buhm-boht] / ˈbʌmˌboʊt /

noun

Nautical.

a boat used in peddling provisions and small wares among vessels lying in port or offshore.

bumboat British

/ ˈbʌmˌbəʊt /

noun

any small boat used for ferrying supplies or goods for sale to a ship at anchor or at a mooring

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of bumboat

1665–75; probably partial translation of Dutch bomschuit a small fishing boat, perhaps contraction of bodemschuit ( je ) literally, bottom-boat

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

bumboat

Consider buddleboy, bogeyman, bumboat man, flirter, higgler, pugger, muffleman, quarrel picker, spittle-maker, whiff-maker and willy man.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 14, 2025

Like bumboat boys diving for pennies, book publishers scrambled for Woollcott words of praise for a new work, to splash on the volume's jacket as the blurb of blurbs.

From Time Magazine Archive

Naturally, being a bumboat woman, she had her basket on her arm.

From Operas Every Child Should Know Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces by Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

Soon the sailors welcome on board Little Buttercup, a Portsmouth bumboat woman who has come to sell her wares, and who is hailed as "the rosiest, the roundest and the reddest beauty in all Spithead."

From The Secrets of a Savoyard by Henry A. Lytton

Beg pardon, sir, but the bumboat woman didn’t come off this morning.

From Crown and Anchor Under the Pen'ant by John B. Greene

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023