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It means the person using the given room as both bedroom and office. The usage of word 'cum' is very common in India. When I first arrived in US, I used to get
by solutionyogi 12y ago
It means the person using the given room as both bedroom and office.
The usage of word 'cum' is very common in India. When I first arrived in US, I used to get lot of weird looks from people, I have finally stopped using it.
See: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/26488/how-does-one-use-the-latin-word-cum-in-a-sentence http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/26488/how-does-on...
- georgemcbay 12y agoAs a 40 year old who has always lived in the US, the use of -cum- in this manner was never widely used in speech during my lifetime, but it did used to be pretty common in writing. Not so much anymore, though.
- mindcrime 12y agoAs another 40 year old who has always lived in the US, that exactly jibes with my experience as well. As far as I can tell, the expression is common in written English, but almost unheard of in spoken English. Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm trying to think of other examples of "things that are sometimes (or often) written, but almost never spoken".
- Intermernet 12y agoThe word "Regards".
- thaumasiotes 12y agoAs a 27-year-old from the US, I tend to agree that this is used in writing (where it's distinguished by being set in italics) and never in speech. I do have a photo of a fancy trash receptacle (four different sections!) in Hong Kong bearing the label "LITTER CUM RECYCLABLES COLLECTION BIN".
- nickstinemates 12y agoI appreciate the explanation! Thank you :)
- wpietri 12y agoIt's legitimate American English, although to my ear it's now archaic, presumably due to the naughty meaning of the term. And I think of it as one of those things that relatively literary, that one would not say in casual conversation.
- wavefunction 12y agoThe two words have different pronunciations (when pronounced 'correctly',) if that helps you feel better.