chum

A friend; a pal.

He looked down upon the girl beside him—a daughter of the desert walking across the face of a dead world with a son of the jungle. He smiled at the thought. He wished that he had had a sister, and that she had been like this girl. What a bully chum she would have been!

That made Thad think of Mark Twain, and he wondered whether the illustrious Tom Sawyer and his chum, Huckleberry Finn, had ever arranged a more fetching reception committee than this one[…]

A roommate, especially in a college or university.

Field had a 'chum,' or room-mate, whose visage was suggestive to the 'Sophs;' it invited experiment; it held out opportunity for their peculiar deviltry.

To share rooms with someone; to live together.

Henry Wotton and John Donne began to be friends when, as boys, they chummed together at Oxford, where Donne had gone at the age of twelve years.

A chap named Eleazir Kendrick and I had chummed in together the summer afore and built a fish-weir and shanty at Setuckit Point, down Orham way. For a spell we done pretty well.

To lodge (somebody) with another person or people.

To make friends; to socialize.

I was not surprised to see somebody sitting aft, on the deck, with his legs dangling over the mud. You see I rather chummed with the few mechanics there were in that station, whom the other pilgrims naturally despised—on account of their imperfect manners, I suppose.

"You'll make yourself disliked on board!" "By von Heumann merely." "But is that wise when he's the man we've got to diddle?" "The wisest thing I ever did. To have chummed up with him would have been fatal -- the common dodge."

To accompany.

I'll chum you down to the shops.

A mixture of (frequently rancid) fish parts and blood, dumped into the water as groundbait to attract predator fish, such as sharks.

Near-synonym: shark bait

The whale’s floating body also forms a chum slick on the surface—a trail of blood, oil, and chunks of fat and flesh that might stretch for miles across the water. […] This chum slick is what attracts sharks from afar. Seabirds are drawn to it too.