Definition of "hummer"
hummer1
noun
plural hummers
(informal) A hummingbird.
Quotations
Between high mortality during the first year, natural disaster, pollution, habitat destruction, and the general decline in hummers that has been reported over the last couple of years (responses given to questions fielded by Bird Watchers indicate that there is a real hummer decline), I feel that I did the right thing by taking this bird in.
2010, Arnette Heidcamp, A Hummingbird in My House: The Story of Squeak, page 2
(slang) A very energetic or lively person; a powerful lively thing.
Quotations
I had a thousand liars, perjurers and villains call on me, and six genuine survivors of Lafitte's band; besides quite a delegation of widows and daughters and offspring of the late lamented pirate. No less than ten of his widows turned up; Jean must have been a hummer!
1897, Archibald Clavering Gunter, Bob Covington: A Novel, page 215
Something that generates a lot of attention, talk, and excitement.
Quotations
The opening paragraph is a real hummer: “ Every day thousands of military aviators go into the sky believing in an unspoken promise: that the military is doing all it can to keep them safe.
2000, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services, Nominations Before the Senate Armed Services Committee, page 464
Someone who upsets or irritates others; a trouble-maker or controversial figure.
Quotations
Of all the onnery new galoots That come to Scrambletown that summer, The meanest cuss—you bet your boots— Was H.A. Jones. He was a hummer! This Jones he was the biggest liar In all that country, all aroun' ; And by the high celestial choir, The liars there was hard to down,—In Scrambletown.
1903, Charles August Fisher, The Minstrel with the Selfsame Song: And Other Poems, page 116
(slang, obsolete, usually as "on the hummer") The condition of having no money.
Quotations
the failure of the powers that be for not doing some definite thing, and the pigheadedness of doing something else, all of which may have confused some of us and permitted the idea to gain foothold that America is about as close to being on the hummer as it can get without slipping over kerplunk.
1916, “Is America on the Hummer? What Other Country Has Her Number?”, in The Mixer and Server, volume 25, page 56
Quotations
The description therefore which the Duke of Ormond's correspondent gives of himself accords in no way with the early experience of the fluent extempore preacher whose eloquence roused Evelyn's enthusiasm, and was so generally admired that when he had preached the hour-glass out, his "hummers" used to encourage him to give them another hour of exhortation.
1868 October 3, James Silk Buckingham, John Sterling, Frederick Denison Maurice, “Our Library Table”, in The Athenaeum, page 431
Quotations
In 1970 she threw a real hummer in her widely acclaimed article for the New York Times entitled “And Don't Call Them 'Lady' Composers” which attacked the music establishment for its sexist practices and its willful dismissal of women's participation and achievement (Oliversos 1970).
2011, Martha Mockus, Sounding Out: Pauline Oliveros and Lesbian Musicality, page 70
(slang, obsolete) A lie or tall tale.
Quotations
It is not supposed that there is now, or that there ever was a man in Madison county who would willfully lie to hurt a fellow-man, or even to enhanced his own interests, but for your spinning yarns and big story telling, she has had some "hummers."
1897, John La Rue Forkner, Byron H. Dyson, Historical Sketches and Reminiscences of Madison County, page 615