rumpus
verbEtymology Unknown. First use appears c. 1745. The OED indicates: "perhaps an arbitrary formation". Possibly an alteration of rumbustical or rumbustious (“boisterous, noisy”) + Latin -us (“nominative suffix”). The use of the verbal form first appears c. 1839.
1
Informal To cause a noisy disturbance or commotion.
- All night, as wide awake as gnats, The terriers rumpused after rats, Or, just for practice, taught their brats, To worry cast-off shoes and hats.1851, James Russell Lowell, Unhappy Mr. Knott, page 291:
- ... and Marie routed up Mammy nights, and rumpussed and scolded, with more energy than ever, all day, on the strength of this new misery.1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, page 81:
2 more examples
- She had been rumpusing with the poker and tongs during the dialogue between the guests, and she enforced her order by thrusting the poker towards the distant corner where the girl sat, as she spoke.1876, Julie P. Smith, His Young Wife, A Novel, page 56:
- Instead she rumpuses about waving her legs in the air and spinning her feet doing three exercises she dubs "Tumbleweed, Clothespin, and Wind Farm."2019, Sam Pickering, The World Was My Garden, Too: