scoff/scarf

[Paul Johnston]

Also cf. the development of scarper "run away", which comes from
Polari, and ultimately italian (escappare?-I know it's the cognate to
English escape).  Again, an /r/ creeps in--twice in this case--in
rhotic British dialects like Edinburgh Scots, and, I believe, in
American dialects (if any) where the item has been taken in.  It is a
common enough Cockney slang item, though, and Cockney is non-rhotic,
so scapa with a long /A:/ might well have been interpreted as
containing an underlying /r/, and the item is always written, when
written,  as containing one.  If scarf comes from either scoff or
scaff, and was originally associated with New York here, and is old
(a lot of ifs), a similar development might have happened here as (1)
NYC and area had the largest amount of British immigration from the
Home Counties right into the mid 19c, and (2) in Southern Britain you
have a lot of short a/short o interchange, particularly around
labials--strap/strop, stamp/stomp etc.  as you do also in Scots (off
 > aff, Tom > Tam and so on).  The combination of the tendenciers
might well have produced scarf from scoff.
There are non-rhotic Scots dialects too, but anything before 1900
would be too early for this development to be involved, and most
Scots /r/-droppers drop it only variably, so they still feel an /r/
there.

Paul Johnston
On Aug 30, 2007, at 10:34 AM, Laurence Urdang wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Urdang <urdang at SBCGLOBAL.NET>
> Subject:      scoff/scarf
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>
> Since the first quote in the OED for scoff is the same year when he
> was born, it is rather unlikely (but, for some, not impossible)
> that it was formed on the name of Auguste Escoffier.
>   I first encountered it in the UK, in the 1970s.  Later, when I
> encountered scarf among native speakers in the New York area, it
> occurred to me that it was a resurrection (hypercorrection, if you
> prefer) of the r-less form scoff by those speakers who want
> listeners to know that they are aware there is an "r" in the
> spelling of a word, which, of course, there wasn't---at least if
> one compares the history of scoff and scarf in the OED.
>   I wanted to check it in the Century, but I couldn't get it on
> line and was too lazy to pick up the volume in the next room.
>   Also, the meaning has always seemed to me closer to 'gorge
> oneself; eat voraciously' than to 'eat heartily.'
>   L. Urdang
>   Old Lyme
>
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