bumf
nounUK /bʌmf/
Etymology Clipping of bumfodder.
1
Derogatory Useless papers; now especially official documents, standardized forms, sales and marketing print material, etc.
- And as for the limited warnings on documents and signs – we are so used to reading this bumf we fail to realise when they mean business.2006: Quest, Richard, A Sour Taste in the Mouth, CNN.com, October 28, 2006
- In America alone, people spent $170 billion on “direct marketing”—junk mail of both the physical and electronic varieties—last year. Yet of those who received unsolicited adverts through the post, only 3% bought anything as a result. If the bumf arrived electronically, the take-up rate was 0.1%. And for online adverts the “conversion” into sales was a minuscule 0.01%.2013 May 25, “No hiding place”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8837, page 74:
1 more example
- I say all this as someone who wishes the right had won one or two more of its battles. It would be just grand to visit a museum without having to fend off tendentious bumf about “power structures”.2025 June 7, Janan Ganesh, “William Buckley and the revolution that wasn’t”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 21: