scrump
English edit
'Scrumpers'
Henry Towneley Green
(1867)
Henry Towneley Green
(1867)
Alternative forms edit
Etymology edit
From a dialectal variation of scrimp, probably from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German schrimpen (“to shrivel up, shrink”), ultimately from Proto-Germanic *skrimpaną, *skrimbaną (“to shrink”), related to Old English sċrimman (“to shrink, draw up, contract”). Related to dialectal English skrammed (“benumbed, paralysed”), English shrimp.
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
scrump (plural scrumps)
- (dialectal) Anything small or undersized.
- (dialectal) A withered, shrivelled, or undergrown person.
- (dialectal) A small apple.
Verb edit
scrump (third-person singular simple present scrumps, present participle scrumping, simple past and past participle scrumped)
- (dialectal) To gather windfalls or small apples left on trees.
- To steal fruit, especially apples, from a garden or orchard.
- 1994, Edward Bond, Edward Bond Letters, volume 1, page 180:
- (we've all seen trees, and arent Adam and Eve condemned for having gone scrumping?; interestingly a great philosopher recalled Saint Augustine spent a lot of his long life being racked with guilt for having gone scrumping for some pears when he was a boy! ...)
- 1997, Caradog Prichard, translated by Philip Mitchell, One Moonlit Night[1], page 18:
- 2000, Bill Oddie, Gripping Yarns, page 12:
- [I]t was something that every schoolboy of my generation almost `had' to do, as obligatory a proof of impending manliness as scrumping apples or pulling girls' pigtails.
I told myself I'd never scrump gooseberries again, or go scrumping apples with Huw and Moi ...
- 2006, Richard Dawkins, chapter 7, in The God Delusion, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, →ISBN, page 251:
- Scrumping itself is a mot juste of unusual economy. It doesn’t just mean stealing: it specifically means stealing apples and only apples.
- (dialectal) To pinch, stint; to beat down in price.
- (slang, dated) To have sex.
Translations edit
to steal fruit, especially apples, from a garden or orchard