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"Scoff", meaning food
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1
2016/02/07 - 6:26pm

A 1913 Berton Braley poem about a hobo longing for spring uses the word "scoff", like this:

I sure do want to roam again

Where fields is green and sweet

An' tap some farmers home again

Fer scoff dat's fit to eat.

I had to look up "scoff" to understand that verse, and I notice it means food.  It also can be used to mean eating, as in "I scoffed down that pizza".  This must be a variant of "scarfed down".  I vaguely recall Grant and Martha discussing "scarf" in a podcast, but I don't recall if they mentioned "scoff".

Anna

P.S. The poem appeared in the Chicago Day Book, February 1, 1913, and can be seen here, along with J. Campbell Cory drawing of the old hobo:

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1913-02-01/ed-2/seq-30

P.P.S. I just looked at the preview of this post. It's nuts that block quote ends up triple spacing the stanza.

deaconB
744 Posts
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2
2016/02/07 - 9:03pm

Nice!

Random House defines scarf[3] to eat voraciously and says it emerged as an Americanism about 1955-1960 as a variant of scoff[2] by those whose accents had troubole with Rs.I think of JFK who had that problem, dor instance referring to those wh served with harner, spelled honor of in rightpondia, honour.

That's the only one I was familiar with.  If lists scoff[2] as both the verb, to eat voraciously, and the noun, grub.  That word goes back another century, to 1855-1860, from the earlier scaff, for which the origin is uncertain.  Collins English (as in UK) dictionary says scoff[2] finds its origins C19: variant of scaff food; related to Afrikaans, Dutch schoft quarter of the day, one of the four daily meals

If it's possible to do an ngrams search on scarf[3[ or scoff[2] as a noun, that requires someone more skilled in use of the tool than I am.  I suspect it's not possible at all.  I did an ngram search for scarfed down and scoffed down, and was elated to find usage for each in the late 1837s, but the elation was short-lived, as no victuals were being wolfed.

In any case, kudos for that nice discovery.  In another fifty years of hanging around here and paying close attention, I should become an expert in speaking a language nobody else understands at all, although my last wife asserted I had little thouble in saying things nobody could understand using language that was, technically speaking, part of our language.

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