#scrumtious

We commonly use this to refer to some especially appetising item of food or a very attractive person. Roald Dahl, who wrote the script for the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, felt it was appropriate for the character Truly Scrumptious, which must be in contention with Pussy Galore for the worst-ever fictional female name.

Critics have not been kind to scrumptious. In 1921, H L Mencken described it as an “artificial word”, lumping it with sockdolager, hunky-dory, spondulix, slumgullion and similar creations of American linguistic ingenuity. In his Dictionary of Modern English Usage in 1926, H W Fowler classed it as a “facetious formation”.

Many dictionaries just say “origin unknown” or “origin uncertain”, not wanting to engage in complicated but ultimately unsatisfying discussions about etymology. This writer has no such qualms.

It’s certainly American in origin, dating from about the 1830s, at a time when so many other splendiferous terms were emerging from the melting pot of cultural assimilation. But when it first appeared it had a different meaning:

I won’t trouble you to ride far to find me; — and then it may be broad sword, or pistol, rifle or bagnet — I’m not over-scrumptious which.

Horse Shoe Robinson, by John Pendleton Kennedy, 1835. Bagnet is an old term for a bayonet.

Here it clearly means scrupulous. In another early example, from Thomas Chandler Haliburton’s The Clockmaker of 1836, it’s a vague term of praise: “A little tidy scrumptious looking slay” (we would now write the last word as sleigh). In 1846, Sylvester Judd put it in his novel Margaret to mean fastidious (“I don’t mean to be scrumptious about it, Judge; but I do want to be a man, if I am a Breakneck, and haven’t so much eddecation as the rest”). It could also have about it the idea of a stylish or handsome person. Our current sense evolved around the middle of the century.

Some current dictionaries start from the modern meaning to argue that it’s from sumptuous, which doesn’t fit the earlier senses. Various English dialects have had words of the same spelling. A writer to Notes and Queries in 1870 said it was Essex dialect meaning charming or delightful, quoting a fond lover to his lass: “Oh you scrumptious little duck!” That neatly matches one modern meaning but not the early ones. Despite its form, it has no connection with the English term for the childish pastime of scrumping, stealing apples from an orchard or garden.

The English Dialect Dictionary records scrumptious as Suffolk dialect for a miserly, stingy or close-fisted person; the Century Dictionary of 1889 and the Oxford English Dictionary suggest that it derives from dialect scrimptious, based on scrimp, to be thrifty, as in scrimp and save. The Dictionary of American Regional English has an entry for scrimption, a bit or scrap, recorded mainly in the US South from 1834, which it says is from English dialect, presumably scrimptious. It’s not impossible to imagine that scrimption (or its variant scrumption) became scrumptious, but we’re still left with no information how the term took on its modern meaning.

Perhaps “origin unknown” isn’t such a bad summary after all.

Oxford English Dictionary says.

scrumptious, a. colloq. or vulgar.

(ˈskrʌmpʃəs)

[Prob. identical with the dial. scrumptious ‘mean, stingy, close-fisted’, related to scrimption small quantity, f. scrimp v. The transition to sense 1 below is not impossible; for the development of sense 2 cf. nice a.]

1.1 Fastidious, hard to please. ? U.S. only.

  1845 Judd Margaret ii. vii. (1874) 291, I don't mean to be scrumptious about it, Judge; but I do want to be a man, if I‥haven't so much eddication as the rest.

2. a.2.a U.S. Stylish, handsome. b.2.b Used as a vague epithet of enthusiastic praise: First rate, ‘glorious’. Now esp. of food: delicious. So ˈscrumptiousness, the state or condition of being scrumptious.

  1836 Haliburton Clockm. Ser. i. xxiii, A little tidy scrumptious looking slay.    1865 Meredith R. Fleming xxxi, Hang me, if ever I see such a scrumptious lot.    1881 Punch 30 July 47/2 There is a certain exquisite scrumptiousness and goloptiousness about Real Turtle.    1894 Somerville & ‘Ross’ Real Charlotte II. xxxii. 247 The cake was scrumptious.    1901 F. Hume Golden Wang-ho iv, ‘I shan't show it [the picture] to anyone til it's done‥; then you'll say it is scrumptious’.    1922 Joyce Ulysses 740 You will always think of the lovely teas we had together scrumptious currant scones and raspberry wafers I adore.    1930 Magnet 25 Jan. 6/2 ‘It's lovely butterscotch—scrumptious!’    1976 A. L. Rowse Cornishman Abroad 14 The scrumptious meal she cooked, Cornish duck and Californian avocado stuffed with shrimp, our own cream from the farm with the delicious sweet.

SCRUM-tious! Rugby 15 Available Now

Walnut Creek, CA (PRWEB) February 24, 2015

Sports lovers and rugby enthusiasts can now bring the fastest growing sport in America to their living rooms: Maximum Games announces the arrival of Rugby 15, the first next-gen rugby game! In Rugby 15, gamers can get down and dirty with professional teams, build their own leagues, and compete against friends. Rugby 15 is available today on…