/hʌm/·verb·c. 1385–1386; Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde (c. 1385) contains 'gan to homme'; a St. Erkenwald manuscript (c. 1386) has 'Þen hummyd he' — both recorded in the Middle English Dictionary·Established
Origin
The English word 'hum' descends from a Proto-Germanic root shared across German, Dutch, and Norse, naming the droning sound of bees in a culture where the hive was the foundation of mead-making and communal life.
Definition
To make a continuous, low, resonant sound with closed lips or of insects buzzing, from Proto-Germanic *hummōną, an expressive root shared across the Germanic family.
The Full Story
Middle English / Proto-GermanicLate 14th century (attested); Proto-Germanic stage c. 500 BCE–200 CEwell-attested
TheEnglishverb 'hum' descends from Middle English hummen (also hommen, c. 1386), meaning 'to buzz, drone, make a continuous murmuring sound.' The word traces to Proto-Germanic *hummōną (to hum, buzz), a root that left systematic cognates across the Germanic branch: Middle High
Did you know?
The bumblebee was called the 'humble-bee' in English from Shakespeare through Keats — not from Latin 'humilis' (modest), but from Old Norse 'humla', the humming creature, the same Germanic root that names the hummingbird. 'Bumble-bee' only displaced it in the 19th century. Both names describe the same
the root operating as a stable inherited lexical item, not merely a spontaneous sound-symbolic coinage. A deeper PIE connection to a root *kem- or *kom- (to hum, buzz) has been
, though the onomatopoeic character of the family means the reconstruction remains tentative. What is clear from the Germanic evidence is that even when a root originates as sound symbolism, it can be transmitted hereditarily across daughter languages rather than independently re-invented in each — the parallel forms in German, Dutch, Old Norse, and English reflect shared inheritance from a common Proto-Germanic ancestor, not convergent coinage. Key roots: *kem- / *kom- (Proto-Indo-European: "to hum, buzz; proposed PIE base for the Germanic hum- family (tentative)"), *hummōną (Proto-Germanic: "to hum, buzz, make a droning sound"), *humelaz (Proto-Germanic: "bumblebee (the humming creature); cognate with Old Norse humla, English humble-bee").