gum

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun Any of various viscous substances that are exuded by certain plants and trees and dry into water-soluble, noncrystalline, brittle solids.
• noun A similar plant exudate, such as a resin.
• noun Any of various adhesives made from such exudates or other sticky substance.
• noun A substance resembling the viscous substance exuded by certain plants, as in stickiness.
• noun Any of various trees, especially of the genera Eucalyptus and Liquidambar, that are sources of gum.
• noun The wood of such a tree; gumwood.
• noun Chewing gum.
• intransitive verb To cover, smear, seal, fill, or fix in place with gum.
• intransitive verb To exude or form gum.
• intransitive verb To become sticky or clogged.
• noun The firm connective tissue covered by mucous membrane that envelops the alveolar arches of the jaw and surrounds the bases of the teeth.
• transitive verb To chew (food) with toothless gums.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To use a gummer upon; gullet (a saw); widen the spaces between the teeth of (a worn saw) by punching or grinding.
• noun The soft tissues, consisting of a vascular mucous membrane, subjacent dense connective tissue, and periosteum, which cover the alveolar parts of the upper and lower jaws and envelop the necks of the teeth.
• noun Hence The edge of the jaw; the part of one of the jaws in which the teeth are set, or over which the tissues close after the loss of teeth: generally used in the plural: as, the toothless gums of old age.
• noun plural The grinders; molars.
• noun Insolent talk; “jaw”; insolence.
• noun Same as gummer.
• noun The sorrel-tree, Oxydendrum arboreum.
• noun The cider-gum or cider-tree, Eucalyptus Gunnii.
• noun The water-tupelo (which see).
• noun The sweet gum, Liquidambar Styraciflua.
• noun The black- or sour-gum, Nyssa syivatica.
• To smear with gum; unite, stiffen, or clog by gum or a gum-like substance.
• To play a trick upon; humbug; hoodwink: said to be from the fact that opossums and racoons often elude hunters and dogs by hiding in the thick foliage of gum-trees.
• To exude or form gum. See gumming
• To become clogged or stiffened by some gummy substance, as inspissated oil: as, a machine will gum up from disuse.
• noun A product of secretion obtained by desiccation from the sap of many plants.
• noun A form of dextrine produced by roasting starch: specifically called artificial or British gum.
• noun One of various species of trees, especially of the genera Eucalyptus, of Australia, and Nyssa, of the United States.
• noun Same as gumming
• noun A bubble; a pimple. Compare red-gum, white-gum.
• noun plural India-rubber overshoes: more commonly called rubbers.
• noun A section of a hollow log or tree (usually a gum-tree) used to form a small well-curb, or to make a beehive. —

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun A vegetable secretion of many trees or plants that hardens when it exudes, but is soluble in water. Also, with less propriety, exudations that are not soluble in water.
• noun (Bot.) See Gum tree, below.
• noun Southern U. S. A hive made of a section of a hollow gum tree; hence, any roughly made hive; also, a vessel or bin made of a hollow log.
• noun Local, U. S. A rubber overshoe.
• noun See under Black, Blue, etc.
• noun the resinous gum of the Australian grass tree (Xanlhorrhœa).
• noun (Zoöl.) the galago of West Africa; -- so called because it feeds on gums. See Galago.
• noun See Animé.
• noun , a gum yielded mostly by several species of Acacia (chiefly A. vera and A. Arabica) growing in Africa and Southern Asia; -- called also gum acacia. East Indian gum arabic comes from a tree of the Orange family which bears the elephant apple.
• noun a gum yielded by the Indian plants Butea frondosa and B. superba, and used locally in tanning and in precipitating indigo.
• noun a plant of the genus Cistus (Cistus ladaniferus), a species of rock rose.