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In this sense, an alum is a former student of a school, college, or university. It is a short, easy word for or , and it does not mark gender: a man, a woman, or a mixed group can all be alums. The tone is informal and mainly American; you hear it at reunions, in fundraising emails, and in campus news. A British speaker is more likely to say former student or graduate, though alum is spreading. It names the person, not the chemical salt that is spelled the same way — that is a different word that just happens to look identical on the page.
校友（口語，多為美式；中文不分成男女）
組成A clipped, informal short form of alumnus / alumna, not a new root of its own. Those Latin words meant a foster child, “one who was nourished”.
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
alumnoun詞源 1/ˈæl.əm/
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An astringent salt, usually occurring in the form of pale crystals, much used in the dyeing and tanning trade and in certain medicines, and now understood to be a double sulphate of potassium and aluminium (K₂SO₄·Al₂(SO₄)₃·24H₂O).
- Venice also needed alum for trade, since it was the point of departure for overland transportation of alum to southern Germany and its cloth-manufacturing Free Cities.
- A natural astringent and antiseptic, potassium alum was coveted for its medicinal and cosmetic properties.
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chemistryinorganic-chemistrynatural-sciencesAny similar double sulphate in which either or both of the potassium and aluminium is wholly or partly replaced by other univalent or tervalent cations.
- With weld and cochineal, which are colouring matters the most sensible to the action of sulphate of iron, the purified alums gave us colours more brilliant, fresh, and in a slight degree lighter; while those with our common alums were all duller, and evidently of a deeper hue.
- For similar reasons, aluminium sulphate and alums are used in dyeing cloth.[…]Normally alums are soluble in water and insoluble in alcohols.
alumverb詞源 1/ˈæl.əm/
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To steep in, or otherwise impregnate with, a solution of alum; to treat with alum.
- The silk should be boiled at the rate of 20 parts of soap per cent. , and then alumed. The aluming need not be so strong as for the fine crimson
- After drying, the cloth was alumed and finally dyed.
alumnoun詞源 2/əˈlʌm/
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A past attendee or graduate (of any gender) of a college, university or other educational institution.
- 1961 Spring, Anchora of Delta Gamma, Volume LXXVII, No. 3, page 59, Evanston-North Shore alums are happy to open their homes to Sigma actives for special social events.
- You'll remember that we're starting with a list of slightly over 7,000 names that are alums (most of them over 50) that we'd like to whittle down to a manageable list of prospects.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。