English · Idiom Candidate

bum steer

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Misleading or false information

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Thông tin sai lệch hoặc giả

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: a steer given to a bum, or hobo

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

And all he gets are these one - liner and bum steers and cheerful shrugs that may or may not be disingenuous.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “bum steer” mean?

Misleading or false information Literally: a steer given to a bum, or hobo

Is “bum steer” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

👁 Views 0 today 0 past 7 days 0 this month 0 all time