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Sumph n. a simpleton, a foolish person

“A Sumph..is a chiel to whom Natur has denied ony considerable share o’ understaunin’, without hae’n chose to mak him just altogether an indisputable idiot”.  This 1831 quotation, cited in the OED from J. Wilson’s Noctes Ambrosianae lix, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, provides a good indication of what a sumph is.  

However, seeing how the word is used in practice can be more informative than trying to provide a neat definition.  The following quotations from the Dictionary of the Scots Language (www.dsl.ac.uk) tell us a bit more about the nature of sumphs. 

In Archibald McIlroy’s When Lint was in the Bell (1897) someone is described as “Naethin’ but a great muckle sumph — a bigger fael [fool] than a’ even tuk ye for”, and in Fred Urquhart’s Time Will Knit (1938): “...She was just takin’ a rise oot o’ him, but the muckle sumph thought she was in earnest.”  More recently, in Liz Lochhead’s Tartuffe (1985) a character asks: “How could it come up Orgon’s humph To abandon his dochter tae yon big sumph?”

These examples describe sumphs as ‘great muckle’ and ‘big’ and size certainly seems to be part of sumphness.  You wouldn’t call a skinny wee person a sumph.  Although usually male, there is the occasional reference to a female sumph, as in this 1933 quotation from the Scots Magazine: “She’d grown a great sumph of a woman”.  Interestingly, this also implies largeness.  

However, there isn’t always a reference to size, and the general impression is that a sumph is gormless or spineless rather than merely stupid.  For example, in Robin Jenkins’ The Thistle and the Grail (1994) someone says: “you’re such a sumph that if you did take the job as barman you’d develop into a drunkard. Your politeness would be the ruin of you.”

 

Scots Word of the Week is written by Ann Ferguson of Scottish Language Dictionaries www.scotsdictionaries.org.uk, 25 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LN (0131) 650 4149 mail@scotsdictionaries.org.uk. For £20 you can sponsor a Scots word.