bum rap


Also found in: Idioms.

bum rap

n
1. a trumped-up or false charge
2. an unjust punishment
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014
References in periodicals archive ?
And the experience is especially unpleasant if the whole thing is a bum rap.
Bucks fans don't believe Drake is getting a bum rap, though.
FINALLY, Kanye West appears to have woken up to the fact that right-wing politics is a bum rap.
A good number of celebrities who sit as judges in talent searches sometimes get a bum rap for treating contestants with kid gloves or sounding overly patronizing.
Tex-Mex cuisine gets a bum rap. It's often seen as a lame Americanization of traditional Mexican food, but Tex-Mex dishes have a history and identity all their own, with a complicated array of geographical distinctions that make even the term "Tex-Mex" oversimplified.
But many nonnatives get a bum rap, says Thompson, an ecologist at the University of Sheffield in England.
Bender is correct in his assertion that the President is getting a bum rap for raising the national debt exponentially; but if we take the argument to the next step to equalize the debt increase per months in office, the following analysis evolves:
Also Euryops (shown left)--it gets a bum rap for being commonplace, but given the right conditions (including where you live), it's bulletproof.
Quote: "Happiness has a bum rap. People say it shouldn't be your spotlight on...
Murphy, but to protect the town's reputation, which sometimes gets a "bum rap.''
IT WAS a bum rap for a man found by police with what was believed to be cocaine and heroin stashed up his backside.
According to Washington, DC-based battery industry group PRBA lithium ion batteries have gotten a bum rap in the media following the grounding of Boeing's (NYSE: BA) 787 Dreamliner fleet following several incidents involving defective batteries.