Over the last few days, I read C. P. Snow’s The New Men. Snow, as you may remember, was both a chemist and a novelist who sought to bring together the ever distanced worlds of science and the humanities. This particular novel focuses on scientists working on developing an atomic weapon in England during World War Two, racing against the competition in America and Germany. I don’t particularly recommend the book, but one of its features is the use of a fair amount of British slang in dialogue.

And in particular, I was intrigued by one word: bumf.

Here is the dialogue:

“In that case, I shall send you my views on paper.”

“Damn it, man,……we’ve talk it out. I don’t want any bumf.”

“I’m sorry, but I want to have it on the record.”

The word seemed so unlikely that I googled it, and Prof. Google told me that the definition of bumf was “useless or tedious printed information or documents”, and the sample sentence was “Most of his mail was just bumf, bills and Christmas cards”.

Whoa!! That is our mail (minus the Christmas cards). We call it “junk mail,” maybe, but that might be too polite. Let’s start calling it what it is. It is just plain bumf.

On whole the definition seems to relate only to unnecessary paper. But today, we also have to recognize that our digital inboxes are also filled with bumf.

Now there is a difference between “spam”, which refers to junk email that we did not ask for and don’t need, and “bumf”, a broader category which would include spam but go beyond it. Bumpf would also include everything unnecessary in material that we otherwise want and need, like popup ads, and extraneous links.

Yes, we live in a virtual world of bumf, and – until today- we have not had a word to describe it.

So where does the word bumf come from? It turns out that it’s a shortened version of bumfodder. You may not be familiar with that word either, but it has been around for 400 years, from Elizabethan times. And, yes, it is an Elizabethan term that Shakespeare never used.

As you might imagine, bumfodder is another word for toilet paper. And this makes it the perfect parent for bumf.

I know what you are thinking: “Art, your whole blog is bumf.” Well, maybe so, but I do my best. Yesterday, Horace Greeley. Today, bumf. Sometimes, things in my house, sometimes places I go. A little of this a lot of that.

And, of course, a lot about our president, Big Don Trump. And here is something crucial you may not be considering: 

The original Trump family name was Drumpf. And that rhymes with Bumf.

And you say there is no God.