1708-10. Swift, Pol. Conv., ii. One may ride to Rumford upon this knife, it is so blunt.
Rum-gagger, subs. phr. (nautical).—'A
sailor who begs' (Clark
Russell).
Rumgumption, Rumbumption,
&c., subs. and adj. (common).—A
class of colloquialisms compounded
with an intensive prefix:
(1) ram (imitatively varied by
rum) = very, strong; and (2)
rum (q.v.) = good, fine, &c.:
also cf. ramp as in rampageous.
Thus rambunctious (or rambustious)
= noisy, 'high-and-mighty';
rambustion = a row;
rambumptious = conceited, self-assertive
(Grose); rumbumption
= conceit, cock-sure-ness;
rumgumption = mother-wit;
ramgumptious = shrewd, bold,
rash (Grose); ramfeezled =
exhausted; rambuskious =
rough; ramgunschoch = rough;
ramshackle = ricketty, crazy.
Substantives are similarly formed:
e.g., rambunction, rambumption,
ramgumption, &c., whilst
such variants as rummel-fumption,
rumble-gumption, rumstrugenous,
and the like are
coined at will. Also rumbusticator
= a man of means, and
ramstam = a headlong fool, and
as adj. = deliberately or undilutedly
silly.
1768. Ross, Helenore, 'Beattie's Address.' They need not try thy jokes to fathom, They want rumgumption.
1778. Foote, Trip to Calais, i. The sea has been rather rumbustious, I own.
d. 1796. Burns, To James Smith. The hairum-scairum, ram-stam boys.
1817. Scott, Rob Roy, xxviii, If we gang ram-stam in on them [we'll get] a broken head to learn us better havings.
1819. T. Moore, Tom Crib's Memorial, 3. Has thought of a plan, which—excuse his presumption—He hereby submits to your Royal rumgumption.
1822. Hogg, Perils of Man, 1. 78. Ye sud hae stayed at hame, an' wantit a wife till ye gathered mair rummel-gumption.
1823. Galt, Entail, 111. 70. Wattie is a lad of a methodical nature, and no a hurly-burly ram-stam.
1823. Lockhart, Reg. Dalton, 1. 199. This will learn you again ye young ramshackle.
1844. Surtees, Hillingdon Hall, v. 21. The rumbustical apologies for great coats that have inundated the town of late years.
1847. Porter, Big Bear, 120. He's as ramstugenous an animal as a log-cabin loafer in the dog-days.
1847. G. Eliot [Life (1885), 1. 168]. All those monstrous rombustical beasts with their horns.
1847. Thackeray, Cane-Bottom'd Chair, st. 5. And 'tis wonderful, surely, what music you get From the rickety, ramshackle, wheezy spinet.
1850. Smedley, Frank Fairlegh, ix. He boldly inquired whether . . . "I had not been a-enhaling laughing gas, or any sich rum-bustical wegitable?"
1853. Lytton, My Novel, xi. xix. As for that white-whiskered alligator . . . let me get out of those rambustious, unchristian, filbert-shaped claws of his.
1860. Dickens, Uncommercial Traveller, xviii. The ramshackle vetturino carriage in which I was departing.
1882. Athenæum, 1 Ap. A ramshackle wagon, rough men, and a rougher landscape.
1883. Clemens, Life on Mississippi, xlviii. Strung along below the city, were a number of decayed, ram-shackly, superannuated old steamboats.
Rum-hole, subs. phr. (American).—A
grog-shop: see Lush-crib.
Rum-homee (or -omer) of the Case. See Omer.
Rum-Johnny, subs. phr. (Anglo-Indian).—1.
A native wharf
laborer.
