"take a stump"

[Douglas G. Wilson]

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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