Q: Have you encountered the term “chumbolone”? It’s new to me. I came across it on John Kass’s website. He used to write for the Chicago Tribune and now writes a lot of opinionated pieces about various issues.
A: It’s a term that was unfamiliar to us as well.
The rare slang word “chumbolone” was first documented about fifteen years ago during the federal trial of Anthony Dale, a former Chicago police officer accused of leaking information to the mob.
In a report by Jeff Coen in the Chicago Tribune on Aug. 24, 2007, there was this mention: “ ‘I don’t wanna look like a ‘chumbolone,’ an idiot,’ said Doyle, using street slang.”
Later that day, Tribune columnist John Kass elaborated on Doyle’s testimony about a coded conversation with mobster Frank Calabrese:
“ ‘I gave him lip service,’ Doyle said. ‘I didn’t know what he was talking about. I don’t wanna look like a chumbolone, an idiot, stupid.’ ” (According to Kass, it’s pronounced chum-buh-LOAN.)
Doyle’s comments were featured in some newspapers and broadcasts across the country, but the term didn’t become popular. It’s not included in standard dictionaries or the Oxford English Dictionary, which is the primary source for English word origins.
It’s also absent from the Dictionary of American Regional English and the updated online edition of Green’s Dictionary of Slang, compiled by lexicographer Jonathon Green.
While the term can be found in a few smaller slang dictionaries that aren’t regularly updated, it’s rarely used outside of Chicago and isn’t widespread within the city itself.
Most of the instances of “chumbolone” that we found in digitized databases were from one writer, Kass, who has trademarked the term and uses it to sell merchandise on his website, like the “No Chumbolone Zone Hat”:
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