I really don’t think I’ve ever heard the expression until the last couple of months. It’s a wonderful bit of jargon – immediately meaningful – and it now seems ubiquitous, between Jennifer Garner (now, of course, divested of hers), Katie Holmes and Gwynneth Paltrow, etc.
Has the phrase been around longer and I just suddenly noticed it, or is it really an '05 coinage?
What does it mean?
Ditto.
So much for “immediately meaningful” :smack:
It refers to the slight bump in a woman’s stomach when she’s a couple of months pregnant – showing, but just barely.
In the tabloids (which, of course, I have only the most distant of relationships with), it is used both for confirmed an unconfirmed pregnancies – e.g., “Check out this pic of Starlet X, who denies being preggers – sure looks like a baby bump to us!”
Pregnant. Perhaps obviously pregnant. Never really heard it before.
OTOH, this does argue for “new phrase”… 
In Britspeak at least it’s been around for ages. When I used it with an American friend a couple of years ago she expressed similar surprise.
stupid
i’d nominate lump, if it didn’t have cancerous overtones.
It seems to be relatively new (within the last year or so) around US gossip mags, along with “canoodling”. Boy I hate both of those terms!
BUMP WATCH! accompanied by a medium-pregnant starlet.
Haven’t heard the 'bloids use “canoodling,” which is a term I’m fond of myself. (It’s so … onomotopoieic).
First reference I saw to it was in, I believe, US magazine, referring to Apple Paltrow (or whatever her last name is) as “Secret Bump of the Year!”
So whenever that was…Dec. 2003? (Obviously it was around before that, that is the first time I personally noticed the usage.) Never heard anyone actually utter this phrase, it seems to be just a magazine thing.
I’ve seen this term kicking around for the last year or so, and it annoys the FUCK out of me.
I’ve been hearing it for years in NYC and Vancouver. Always immediately obvious, since you’re talking about a young woman at the time, eg. Look at her with the baby bump.
Well, I loathe the cult of celebrity, and actively avoid gossip magazines and such, so it’s no wonder I haven’t seen these expression.
“Canoodling”? I bet that one wasn’t created by a Canadian…
What the heck are you doing while “canoodling” that makes it onomatopoeic?
Canoodian, more like.
A lady never canoodles and tells.
I’ve used the phrase ‘baby bump’ for as long as I can remember. I use it for all pregnant ladies though, not just those a few months along.
It’s about as annoying as “preggers”.
During the 1960s, my friend’s dad was arrested at a huge party in Glasgow, in the largest mass arrest in Scottish history. According to my friend’s dad, the arresting officer told the judge in evidence that the hundreds of defendants were “jumping around and canoodling”.
The judge replied “if they were jumping around, then they could not have been canoodling, and if they were canoodling they could not have been jumping around. Case dismissed!”