rheum

American  

[room] / rum /

noun

• rheums
  plural

1. a thin discharge of the mucous membranes, especially during a cold.

2. catarrh; cold.

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rheum British  

/ ruːm /

noun

1. a watery discharge from the eyes or nose

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• rheumic
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• rheums
  plural

Etymology

Origin of rheum

1350–1400; Middle English reume < Late Latin rheuma < Greek rheûma ( rheu-, variant stem of rheîn to flow, stream + -ma noun suffix of result)

Explanation

Rheum is an old-fashioned word for the watery discharge that drips from your nose and eyes when you have a cold or allergies. You may come across the word rheum in 19th-century novels, or your doctor might use the term to describe your cold symptoms. It’s not the word you’d use in everyday speech, though. You wouldn't say, "My allergies are really acting up. Please excuse the rheum streaming down my face." But you might use the adjective rheumy to describe your dog's runny eyes or even your own. The word comes from the Greek rheuma, meaning "a stream, or current."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

rheum rheums

Surprised and relieved that he could see me through all that rheum, I said, “How come?”

From Salon ● Jan. 28, 2014

There was plenty of rheum at the top.

From Time Magazine Archive

Of "pocketable" bulk, it is a creature to fend for its weekending master or mistress against all skulking shapes of boredom, unsociability, indisposedness and even of palatal lassitude and the "thin rheum."

From Time Magazine Archive

One of his comrades was drowned in a river whirlpool; he himself nigh died of a jungle rheum.

From Time Magazine Archive

S. I looked for the chalky cliffs, but I could find no whiteness in them; but I guess it stood in her chin, by the salt rheum that ran between France and it.

From The Comedy of Errors The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] by William George Clark

He himself sheds a few rheums with the fair-looking, fair-spoken Dame, and dedicates to her a few rhymes.

From The Book of Khalid by Ameen Fares Rihani

Sol causes rheums in the eyes, coldness in the stomach and liver, syncope, catarrhs, pustular eruptions, hysterics, eruptions on the lower extremities.

From Thaumaturgia by An Oxonian

These, by their sweetness, allay the sharpness of rheums, and lenify their acrimony.

From A Treatise on Foreign Teas Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, Entitled An Essay On the Nerves by Hugh Smith

It leads to rheums and indigestions and off we go.

From Journeys to Bagdad by Charles S. (Charles Stephen) Brooks

They affirmed it was an antidote to all poison; that it expelled rheums, sour humours, and obstructions of all kinds.

From Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce by E. R. Billings