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Synonyms:(Australia, Britain, Ireland, New Zealand, informal)brolly, (Britain, dated)gamp
It smells like rain. Perhaps we should take along a bumbershoot.
1887, Olivia Lovell Wilson, “Left. A Railroad Episode.”, in Parlor Varieties: Part Three: Plays, Pantomimes, and Charades, Boston, Mass.: Lee and Shepard; New York, N.Y.: Charles T. Dillingham, →OCLC, act I, page 113:
Oh! Hang the bumbershoot! [Flings umbrella away, clasps Mrs. Dobbs wildly.]
1891 March 21, “From the New Mother Goose”, in Brooklyn Life: A Journal of Society, Literature, Drama & the Clubs, volume III, number 55, Brooklyn, New York, N.Y.: Brooklyn Life Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 2, column 1:
Little drops of water / It is safe to bet / If you have no bumbershoot, / Make you doosid wet.
"It—it belongs in our family," said Button-Bright, beginning to eat and speaking between bites. "This umbrella has been in our family years, an' years, an' years. But it was tucked away up in our attic an' no one ever used it 'cause it wasn't pretty." / "Don't blame 'em much," remarked Cap'n Bill, gazing at it curiously; "it's a pretty old-lookin' bumbershoot."
1958 December 1, “Wichita Television Corporation Incorporated, d/b/a KARD-TV and International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees & Moving Picture Machine Operators of the U.S. & Canada, Motion Picture Projectionists, Local No. 414, AFL-CIO ”, in Decisions and Orders of the National Labor Relations Board, volume 122, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office [for the National Labor Relations Board], published 1959, →OCLC, page 251:
Two women pickets, Krkossa and Menefee, walked the picket line in front of the Respondent's studio for 1½ hours on 1 day carrying large old-fashioned men's umbrella (perhaps better described by the word "bumbershoots") thereby, according to the Respondent's theory, committing serious strike misconduct by interfering with pedestrian traffic in front of the Respondent's studio, by preventing others on the street or sidewalk from reading advertising material painted on the approximately 50-foot expanse of windows of the Respondent's building facing upon the street, and by reason of the hazard allegedly created of physical damage to passing pedestrians from the ribs of said bumbershoots.
Me ol' bamboo, me ol' bamboo / You'd better never bother with me ol' bamboo. / You can have me hat or me bumbershoot / But you'd better never bother with me ol' bamboo.
On the march, it began to rain, I had an umbrella, but at 5:51 we copped out for our dinner-date, when just in sight of the sidestreet leading to the U. N., solid with motionless people under their parapluies and bumbershoots; that’s the way it shone back to us, international.
2021 April, Renée Rosen, chapter 60, in The Social Graces, New York, N.Y.: Berkley Books, →ISBN, page 352:
She was terrified as a pair of footmen—dressed in full sixteenth-century livery, powdered wigs and all—cut through the chaos and ushered them inside the Waldorf, shielding them from the flying debris with bumbershoots.
Usage notes
Since c. 1940, many Americans have mistakenly assumed the word is British slang,[2] but the word is generally not used in Britain.