"take a stump"

[Jonathan Lighter]

My SWAG is that "take a stump" implies running away up a tree-stump like a
scared critter.  You'd need Davy Crockett to grin one of them things down.

JL

On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 11:02 PM, Douglas G. Wilson <douglas at nb.net> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
> Subject:      Re: "take a stump"
>
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>
> George Thompson wrote:
> > ....
> >         "This they considered as daring them to it; and "Chauncey's
> Tigers never took a stump," at it they went. . . .
> >         A Green Hand's First Cruise. . . .  quoted in Hudson River
> Chronicle, January 19, 1841, p. 1, col. 3
> >
> >         This is quoted from a memoir of a American prisoner of war during
> the War of 1812, a sailor who had been held in a camp in England.  The
> guards fired into a group of the prisoners, who had been playing a
> bat-and-ball game; the ball was hit over a wall, and not for the first time
> that day; the guards had been throwing the ball back to the sailors, but
> this time they would not, and refused to allow a prisoner to retrieve it.
>  There was a disturbance, and the shooting followed.
> >
> > So:
> >
> > The OED has:
> >         stump, (noun, #1)  9. Cricket.    a. Each of the three (formerly
> two) upright sticks which, with the bails laid on the top of them, form a
> wicket.
> > to draw (the) stumps: to pull up the stumps, as a sign of the
> discontinuance of play or of the termination of a match or game.
> >
> > or
> >         (stump, noun, #3)  2. U.S. colloq. ‘A dare, or challenge to do
> something difficult or dangerous’ (W. 1911).  The earliest appearance is
> 1871.
> >
> >         If this is connected with the first, then it is a variant of
> "draw the stumps", but means "to quit or concede defeat".
> >         The second seems more likely by its sense, with "take a stump"
> meaning "take a dare", but the sentence is in the negative, which isn't
> appropriate.  "Chauncey's Tigers never refused a stump" or "Chauncey's
> Tigers always took a stump" would fit.
> --
>
> In fact "take a stump" apparently was used either way, = "accept a
> dare/challenge" OR = "refuse/fail a dare/challenge". One can see several
> examples at Google Books (e.g, by searching phrase "take a stump").
>
> I suppose the noun "stump" = "dare/challenge" corresponds to the verb
> "stump" which means both "dare/challenge" and "confound" (e.g.," stump
> the experts") which latter perhaps can be understood as "_successfully_
> challenge". Then "take a stump" could be taken as "accept a
> challenge/dare" _or_ "accept a stumping" = "be confounded".
>
> -- Doug Wilson
>
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