Rambunctious Meaning and Origin

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Yeah. Hi, this is Jerry. I’ve called you a few times. I used to be from Hell’s Kitchen, New York, but now I’m retired and I’m living with my son in Northern Virginia.

Well, all right. Well, welcome to the show, Jerry. We’re glad to have you.

Thank you. Yeah. The reason I called was because the other day we have a standard poodle and standard poodles are really active and jumping around and this and that.

And I said, I just happened to comment to my daughter-in-law. I said, and his name’s Pepper. I said, Pepper is certainly rambunctious.

And then I paused and said, rambunctious. What the heck kind of word is that? Where did I get it? I don’t know what the heck. Anyhow, I don’t know where that came from.

Rambunctious is just really active, really, you know, I have no problem knowing what it means, but I don’t know where it came from. So I thought maybe you could clarify it for me.

Yeah, it’s a great word for a standard poodle, isn’t it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Rambunctious is a bit of a puzzle. It first shows up in the early half of the 19th century in the U.S. When there was this period of great linguistic exuberance and creativity, particularly in the 1820s and 1830s.

We get a lot of these really active rough and tumble words like discombobulate and hornswoggle, meaning to swindle, or absquatulate, meaning to take off in a hurry, or scalawag, or scrumptious, and snollygoster, which is a corrupt politician.

They’re all these words that bubble up in this period where people are just having a whole lot of fun with language. And we’re not really sure exactly how that one came to be, although it may be an alteration of a British word, which is rumbustious, which sounds kind of similar, doesn’t it?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it can mean boisterous or robust. And in fact, that word comes in turn from a word robustious, which means boisterous and robust.

So it seems like maybe it’s an adaptation of that word but we don’t really know so it has nothing to do with livestock and and rams and and butting heads or anything like that no that’s that’s a great picture but that’s that’s the only way I could put it together that’s where I was really stumped on it that’s -huh okay okay that’s great all right all right thanks Jerry yeah give Pepper a little head scratch for us?

Oh, I always do. He loves that, too.

Well, who doesn’t? There you go. Yeah, that’s a good point. Good point.

Take care now. All right, great. Thanks very much. Thanks, Jerry. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye.

Come join us. Let’s be rambunctious together. 877-929-9673.