"take a stump"

[Wilson Gray]

FWIW, old blues stanza:

Dog chased a rabbit
And he ran him hop, skip, and jump
Hunter tried to shoot him
Till he hid behind _a stump_.

-Wilson

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 9:08 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "take a stump"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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"
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------=
> ------
>>
>> 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 duri=
> ng
>> 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 ti=
> me
>> 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 (formerl=
> y
>> 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. =91A dare, or challenge to d=
> o
>> something difficult or dangerous=92 (W. 1911).  The earliest appearance i=
> s
>> 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, =3D "accept a
>> dare/challenge" OR =3D "refuse/fail a dare/challenge". One can see severa=
> l
>> examples at Google Books (e.g, by searching phrase "take a stump").
>>
>> I suppose the noun "stump" =3D "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" =3D "be confounded".
>>
>> -- Doug Wilson
>>
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>
>
> --=20
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
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--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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