Scrump

//ˈskɹʌmp// noun, verb, slang

noun, verb, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Anything small or undersized. dialectal
  2. 2
    A withered, shrivelled, or undergrown person. dialectal
  3. 3
    A small apple. dialectal
Verb
  1. 1
    To gather windfalls or small apples left on trees. dialectal
  2. 2
    To steal fruit, especially apples, from a garden or orchard.

    "(we've all seen trees, and arent Adam and Eve condemned for having gone scrumping?; interestingly a great philosopher recalled Saint Augustine spent a lot of his long life being racked with guilt for having gone scrumping for some pears when he was a boy! ...)"

  3. 3
    To pinch, stint; to beat down in price. dialectal
  4. 4
    To have sex. dated, slang

Example

More examples

"Every night, when all was quiet, he would steal into his neighbour's garden to scrump an apple."

Etymology

From a dialectal variation of scrimp, probably from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German schrimpen (“to shrivel up, shrink”), ultimately from Proto-Germanic *skrimpaną, *skrimbaną (“to shrink”), related to Old English sċrimman (“to shrink, draw up, contract”). Related to dialectal English skrammed (“benumbed, paralysed”), English shrimp.

Related phrases

scrump up

More for "scrump"

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.