gumph
verbEtymology From Scots [Term?].
1
To grope, especially after fish.
2
Used with out To catch fish by groping.
gumph
nounEtymology Unknown.
1
A foolish person; a gump.
- Gump, a numscull.1825, John Jamieson, Supplement to the Etymological dictionary of the Scottish language:
- Drossy saw ’em in her drawer, and for all the gumph he is, he knew the writing; and I made him get ’em for me this morning while they were at breakfast.1860, Susan Warner, Anna Bartlett Warner, Say and Seal, page 246:
3 more examples
- He strikes me as the perfect example of an intellectual gumph. He knows too much!1919, St. John Greer Ervine, John Ferguson:
- ‘ Tell them what, you gumph ? ’ cried Squibs. ‘ Are you all mad ? ’1938, George Smith, The Cornhill Magazine, page 816:
- If Romeo were just a lovesick gumph, occasionally falling into a deeper trance in which he speaks unaccountable poetry, then Olivier is your Romeo.1971, Ronald Hayman, John Gielgud, New York: Random House:
2
Slang Nonsense.
- Things had not been going will with Pino ever since he started to take Sister Apollonia’s bloated gumph as gospel. Thanks to the wacko, his man was actually getting a Christ complex.1998 December 15, T.C. Van Adler, St. Agatha's Breast: A Novel, St. Martin's Press, →ISBN:
- ‘It’s like listening to adolescent daughters with all their gumph and they’re going to chew you out...’2000 April, Linda Grant, Remind Me Who I Am, Again, Granta Books, New Ed edition (July), page 266
1 more example
- Between a couple of silent factories, beat-box music drifted over to us. Some kind of unrecognizable chart gumph; the usual mix of soul and rap.2003 June 6, Chris Wooding, Crashing, Scholastic Point, Scholastic Paperbacks (November), pages 100-101