"Eat" = _scoff_ or _scarf_?

[Wilson Gray]

As it happens, I didn't come across either of these until 1961 (I
don't have the relevant volume of HDAS, but I vaguely recall reading
somewhere or other that these forms go back a way), when I was in the
Army. (In Saint Louis, we said "grease" [gri:z], "get some pecks,"
"spoon a bit," and, no doubt, others that will come to mind as soon as
I click on Send.) And I learned both at the same time. My original
impression was that hamburgers (black GI's) used "scoff," whereas
cheeseburgers (white GI's) used "scarf." However, Greg - that
proto-whigger  who wanted to learn the BE pronunciation of _cool_, who
knew much more about modern-in-those-days jazz than I'd ever wanted to
know, R&B being my sound, who was the first person that I ever heard
use "How ADJ is that?!" as a catch phrase, who was stunned by the
syntax, when a Southern-born cook told him to "git _you_ a tray"; as
my namesake, Wilson Pickett, once rhetorically asked, "Y'all know 'im,
don'tcha?" - after hearing me use "scarf" when chatting with him,
informed me that the only correct form was "scoff."

Ever since then, I've been annoyed by occurrences - only literary,
since I've been out of The War - of "scarf." Yet, I have the word of
just a single acquaintance that _scoff_ is the "correct" form, as
ill-defined as "correct" may be, WRT slang. I assume that Greg
essentially meant that _scoff_ was the older, original form.

(You can jump in at any time, Jon.)

-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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