rheum

From Middle English reume, rewme, from Anglo-Norman reume, from Late Latin rheuma, from Ancient Greek ῥεῦμα (rheûma, “stream, humour”). Doublet of stream.

• IPA^(key): /ɹuːm/, /ɹɪu̯m/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Homophone: room (most accents)
• Rhymes: -uːm

rheum (countable and uncountable, plural rheums)

1. (uncountable) Thin or watery discharge of mucus or serum, especially from the eyes or nose, formerly thought to cause disease.
   • c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, , page 166:

     You that did voide your rume vpon my beard, / And foote me as you ſpurne a ſtranger curre / Ouer your threſhold, […]

   • 1599, [Thomas] Nashe, Nashes Lenten Stuffe, , London: [Thomas Judson and Valentine Simmes] for N L and C B , →OCLC, page 10:

     [T]thronging theaters of people (as well Aliens as Engliſhmen) hiued thither about the ſelling of fiſh and Herring, from Saint Michael to Saint Martin, and there built ſutlers booths and tabernacles, to canopie their heads in from the rhewme of the heauens, or the clouds diſſoluing Cataracts.

   • 1916 December 29, James Joyce, chapter III, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, N.Y.: B[enjamin] W. Huebsch, →OCLC, page 123:

     He wore about his shoulders a heavy cloak; his pale face was drawn and his voice broken with rheum.

2. Illness or disease thought to be caused by such secretions; a catarrh, a cold; rheumatism.
   • 1603, Michel de Montaigne, “Of the Recompences or Rewards of Honour”, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes , book II, London: Val Simmes for Edward Blount , →OCLC, page 227:

     And not as ſome yeeres ſince, I ſaw a Deane of S. Hillarie of Poictiers, reduced by reaſon and the incommoditie of his melancholy to ſuch a continuall ſolitarineſſe, that when I entered into his chamber he had never remooved one ſteppe out of it in twoo and twenty yeares before: yet had all his faculties free and eaſie, onely a rheume excepted that fell into his ſtomake.

3. (poetic) Tears.
   • 1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The life and death of King Richard the Second”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, , page 27, column 2:

     Rich. And ſay, what ſtore of parting tears were ſhed? / Aum. Faith none for me: except the Northeaſt wind / Which then grew bitterly againſt our face, / Awak’d the ſleepie rhewme, and ſo by chance / Did grace our hollow parting with a teare.

• (dried rheum around eyes): crusty (slang), gound (UK dialectal), sleep, sleepy dust (informal)

From Ancient Greek ῥῆον (rhêon).

rheum

1. rhubarb

• → Translingual: Rheum