Chum up

I chummed up with a few of my new work colleagues.

Having met Mr. Hodson many years at various shows, and “chummed up,” as naturally we should have, he invited me to go and see him at his home in Somersetshire.

He said he met a stranger in a saloon last night, and that they chummed up together, and started in to make a night of it.

“[…] which would you rather do: be in with a lot of greasy mechanics and laboring-men, or chum up to a real fellow like Lord Wycombe, and get invited to his house for parties?”

‘Were you in your basha just before you went on guard duty?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘With other chaps. Men you’d chummed up with?’ ‘Yes, sir.’

They have a practice of “chumming up” a new fellow-prisoner—beating him with old swords and staves kept in the prison for the purpose, to exact a fee of a half-crown.

1849, John Brand, Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, revised by Henry Ellis, London: Henry G. Bohn, Volume 2, p. 452, Mr. Miller. They are not very nice whom they chum up? Boot. Not very; they would as soon chum you up as anybody else.