What it means
All that pointless paperwork, info-filler, and admin guff that lands in your inbox or on your desk and makes your soul leave your body. The important bit is usually in there somewhere, it’s just buried under forms, attachments, and waffle. Originally short for bum-fodder, so yeah, it’s always had a whiff of being useless.
Usage examples
"Got an email from HR with 12 attachments of bumf. Made a brew, skimmed it all, and the actual date change was one tiny line."
"The new job came with a folder of bumf I'll never actually read."
"I've had to wade through three PDFs of bumf just to find the one bit I actually needed."
"They sent loads of onboarding bumf before day one, and half of it was just policy waffle."
"They gave us a welcome pack full of bumf, and the only thing I needed was the Wi-Fi password on page nineteen."
Where it comes from
Bumf is old British stuff. It comes from bum-fodder, which meant toilet paper back in the 19th century. From there it slid into meaning worthless printed material like leaflets, circulars, and forms. These days people still use it for paper clutter, and plenty use it for digital admin fluff too.
Other ways to say it
Editors of this term
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- An example
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