scrumdiddlyumptious (1962)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 1/10/06, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I saw _Lady and the Tramp_ when it was re-released about fifteen years ago
> and did not notice any "scrumdiddlyumptious" in the film itself.
>
>  But  in the back of my mind I do hear a voice like Bugs Bunny's advertising
> something like a breakfast cereal, maybe in the early '60s, maybe years later,
> saying, "It's SCRUMPdiddlyUMPtious ! "
>
>   That commercial was the only time I've encountered the word.
>
>   However, Berry & Van Den Bark's _American Thesaurus of Slang_ (1942) does list
> "scrumdiddliumptious" (as well as few other similiar terms ! ) in three different places.
>
>   Though lacking "scrumdiddliumptious," Weseen's _Dictionary of American Slang_
> (1933) offers "scrumdumpish" and "scrumptedidleous."

Very nice. Now that I check _AmSp_, I see Thomas E. Murray wrote a
short piece on "Scrumdiddleyishuss and Scrumpdillyishus" in Winter
1986 (61.4:376-7). Murray recalls watching a local children's show in
St. Louis in the early '60s called "Corky the Clown," in which
"scrumdiddleyishuss" was used by Corky to plug the sponsored food
products. A decade later, Dairy Queen began using "scrumpdillyishus"
in its advertising. Both are obviously blends of "scrumptious" and
"delicious" with a "diddly/dilly" infix (or rather a bridge?).

http://www.jstor.org/view/00031283/ap020124/02a00200/


--Ben Zimmer