Yummy and scrummy - childhood terms for the taste of
food. I remember using them when I was a kid.
They're actually quite old - well, a hundred years
or so - they're late 19th century - is the first
time I've found a reference to them from 'yum, yum'
- 'yummy' from 'yum, yum' - first, referring to
delicious food, of course, and then to attractive
people. That became a usage in the 1990s, which was
quite fashionable for a while. People talked about
'yummy mummies' - that is, the perfectly-groomed
woman who goes to yoga classes, stays slim, has
clean children and has a four-wheel-drive. And other
usages came in too - 'I've got a very yummy job',
people might say, and recently, I heard somebody
talking about somebody who had a very yummy blog on
the internet - in that sense, it means, sort of,
delightful and attractive, rather than delicious.
Well, 'scrummy', anyway became modelled on 'yummy'.
It developed in the early 20th century some years
later, again, originally with reference to food -
scrumptious, you see, it's a derivation from that
word, which means delicious. People talked about
'scrummy cakes' and 'scrummy recipes', and then,
started using it as an adjective too, more than
'yummy' did, you know, 'that was scrummier', 'this
is scrummiest'. I have heard 'yummier' and
'yummiest', but 'scrummier' and 'scrummiest' seems
to be more common! Something 'sounds scrummy'. There
are 'scrummy TV shows' now. The word, evidently, has
moved on!
Downloads
Transcript
(pdf - 31 K)
Lesson
plan - Teacher's notes, student worksheets with
answers (pdf - 71 K)
Audio
- Professor David Crystal on "Yummy and scrummy"
(mp3 - 577 K)
