Scrumping

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Pascale Hickson and I’m calling from Bozeman, Montana.

Pascale?

Yeah.

Oh, cool.

Hi, Pascale. Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

What can we help you with?

Well, I was calling because I had a question about a verb that I learned from a British-American friend of mine that she taught me a few years ago called to scrump.

And she told me about this verb because we have beautiful apple trees all over Bozeman.

And we like to go steal apples from other people’s trees.

And she told me that the British actually have a verb for this.

It’s called the scrump, and they go scrumping, which I thought was fascinating.

And then I was thinking, is that where we got scrumptious?

And is that how apples came to be scrumptious?

Huh, interesting.

Scrumptious probably is not related to scrump, and I say this with a little asterisk next to it because one dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary, says that scrumptious might possibly come from scrump.

Which means to, well, we’ll get to that in a second.

And other dictionaries, though, say that scrumptious is probably derived from sumptuous, which means expensive looking, splendid, super nice, something like that.

I tend to lean more toward the sumptuous definition.

It makes a lot of sense.

But what’s really interesting is to get behind that verb to scrump, because it’s related to a wide variety of words, some of them well-known, some of them not known at all, in English and in other Germanic languages that all mean to shrivel up.

And so shrimp is actually related to this because shrimp, kind of like they curl up their body when they’re threatened.

And there’s even, this is a slang term, to shrimp someone’s toes is to nosh on their toes and they’ll kind of curl up with ecstasy.

So there’s a wide variety of these words all kind of related.

They’ve all got this sk and the mp in there somewhere.

Scrump and shrimp and shrimp and scrimp.

It’s actually related to scrimp as well.

So the idea of being thrifty, where I guess stealing apples is kind of being thrifty, right?

Or actually being prunish and tight-fisted about something.

The idea of maybe shriveling up your fists, I don’t know.

I love it because when we deem apples scrump-worthy, it’s usually after the first frost or two frosts when they’re starting to look sad.

That’s when we decide that the owner of that apple tree no longer deserves their apple.

I agree.

And, you know, that happens here in San Diego County, here in Southern California.

People have giant, big rows of trees with citrus on them, and they rot.

I’m like, what is the matter?

Yeah, that’s shameful.

Yeah, and so since we learned this verb, we’ve been having so much fun.

And I guess, I don’t know if you know this or if you can answer this question, but I’m wondering, can we apply scrumping to other fruits?

Or is it only apples?

Go for it.

Or is this only a British thing?

Martha’s nodding yes.

We give you permission.

Definitely go for it.

English is filled with words that have just been slightly broadened to encompass a more general meaning.

Well, I love scrump-worthy.

Scrump-worthy, yeah.

Fantastic.

Even though there’s probably no relationship between scrump and scrumptious, it’s a nice connotation.

It’s a nice association.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much for answering my question.

That was really cool.

Yeah, sure. I’m going to go scrumping some fruit this year, I think, myself.

Awesome. We’ll enjoy.

Take care.

Watch out for the owners.

Bye-bye.

All right. Thank you so much.

You know, there’s also, in Britain, there’s scrumpy.

Have you ever had a glass of scrumpy?

What is that, apple cider or something?

Yes. Apple cider made from those sort of leftover, unselected apples, those shriveled ones.

Right. You can still press juice out of them, right?

Right.

And it’s probably a little more fermented, a little longer.

The sugar has had magical things happen to it, right?

I bet it has a kick to it. That’s what I’m thinking.

Trumpworthy. I like that. You could use it for so many different things.

I did not know that Bozeman was known for its apple trees.

Or its British people.

That’s awesome. 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.