gum

1. 1.

   cover, fill, fix or smear with or as if with gum

   “if you gum the tape it is stronger”

   Broaderput on
2. 2.

   grind with the gums; chew without teeth and with great difficulty

   “the old man had no teeth left and mumbled his food”

   Synonymsmumble

   Broaderchew
3. 3.

   become sticky

   Broaderchange
4. 4.

   exude or form gum

   “these trees gum in the Spring”

   Broaderexude

Other forms of gum

plural

gums·

past tense or participle

gummed

present participle

gumming

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about gum

What does gum mean?

gum means "a preparation (usually made of sweetened chicle) for chewing". That is the primary sense; the word has 10 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in gum?

gum has 1 syllable: gum. In IPA it is /ˈɡʌm/.

What is another word for gum?

Close synonyms include chewing gum, gingiva, glue, mucilage, gumwood. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is gum a common word?

gum is banded "Common" — everyday vocabulary in speech and writing. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.