1828, William Carr, The dialect of Craven, Dialogue II, page 320:
Giles. "Thou's far deeper red i'th' scripture, ner I gaum'd the to be."
Brid. "I've oft heeard our parson talk thus fray't pulpit; an, God be thank'd, I've a gay good memory, an I's gaily practis'd wee't hevin feaful strang bouts wi' ye Methodies."
1873, John Harland and T. T. Wilkinson, Lancashire Legends:
What t' farreps, mon, dost gaum [suppose] us chaps as tears t' guts eawt o' th' eairth […]
1901, Henry Wallace Phillips, A Matter of Authority, in McClure's Magazine, volume 16, page 447:
"There's your can of surup, pardner," I says; "pour it in my hair." […] So he done it. I handed him a piece of bacon-rind. "Gaum her around," I says. An' he done that, too.
1916, in Pearson's Magazine, volumes 35-36, page 382:
[…] Mr. Henry F. Lippett, representing the culture of the New England cotton mill owners and prancing into the Senate chamber with a wolf's skin wrapped about his loins and his body gaumed over with alternate stripes of ochre and red keel.
1975, Documents on Art and Taste in Australia: The Colonial Period, 1770-1914, page 122:
he combed his thick shock of wool with some pain to himself, then gaumed it with grease and rubbed some fat over his visage,
1983, Goldenseal, volume 9, page 28:
The preacher said, "She gaums her face With powder, like a strumpet."
1901, Hamlin Garland, Her Mountain Lover, page 145:
He urged the horse about the court, trying to guide him, cow-boy fashion, by pressing the rein across the neck; but the horse only gaumed. "Not a blame thing ! I don't suppose there 's a horse in England knows the cross-neck rein. You can't do any high-class riding while you rein like a drayman."
Jenny can see the leather in her mind's eye, feel the soft silk of the untanned side. The tanginess of it gaums her mouth from memory, from chewing on a belt when she was younger, the way small balls and string of the material turned to jell in her mouth before dissolving into nothing.
1836 August 15, Extract India Revenue Consulations, published in Papers relative to the cultivation of the tea plant in British India (1839):
By this means Mr Bruce obtained information that tea was growing at Jagundoo, further down the Burra Dehing. To this place he proceeded forthwith in a canoe manned by Singfos, and on his arrival, persuaded the gaum to set about clearing the tea trees from the low pingle and creepers amongst which they were buried.
1858, Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, volume 36, page 43:
Our driver accordingly drew up, and sent into the gaum to request their attendance ; and in the meantime — taking all our anxious injunctions to make haste quite leisurely — he sat himself down on the roadside, […]
1929, Tea and Coffee Trade Journal, volume 56, page 388:
Major Bruce disposed of the balance of his merchandise and set out upon his return journey after making a contract with the gaum to have a quantity of tea plants ready for him to take away with him the following year.
1963, Dinakar Dhondo Karve, The New Brahmans: Five Maharashtrian Families, page 234:
[I persuaded the] gaum to teach Hindi to me and to anybody else that cared to learn.
Awadh in revolt, 1857-1858: a study of popular resistance glosses it as "clan", but this doesn't fit some of the citations above.
noun: (rare, dialectal or colloquial) a useless, gauming person(?)
1951, James Reynolds, The Grand Wide Way, page 176:
The new boy, Denis Cony, was a lad with a way with him. Overnight he became as much of a favourite with Timsey as the unfortunate gaum of a Gorgon had been "an insult and an injury."