16 August 2016

Bumf

I encountered this new (to me) word in Agatha Christie's The Clocks (1963):
"It was just after two o'clock that I walked into the station and asked for Dick.  I found him at his desk leafing over a pile of stuff...

"You've got a lot of bumf there."
I had to look it up:
  1. (Britain, obsolete) Toilet paper.
  2. Useless papers; now especially official documents, standardized forms, sales and marketing print material etc.
 The word was created as a "shortened form of bumfodder."

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