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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

A girl who sang in the lily drift—a-sailing on this dirty, reeking bumboat, with cattle dying jammed in the pens!

From O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 by Edison Marshall

She’s as sweet a gal as a fellow would wish to see, an’ yet he don’t pay no more attention to her than if she was an old bumboat ’ooman.

From Rivers of Ice by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne

Our bumboat boarded us early and stayed with us until the corporal of the guard called "time."

From A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" by Russell Doubleday

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