chump

   This word appeared at the beginning of the eighteenth century, apparently suggested by existing words such as ‘chunk’, ‘clump’, and ‘stump’. It was at first used of an end piece of wood, then the blunt end of anything, such as a cut of meat. Chump-chops retain this sense of the word. The associations with thickness and bluntness caused ‘chump’ to be applied humorously to people. It was a fashionable word amongst British schoolboys of the 1920s, parallel to ‘idiot’ or ‘blockhead’. Typical examples of public-school usage occur in Mike, by P.G.Wodehouse. The word remains in occasional vocative use as a very mild insult, similar to ‘clot’. It is used in a friendly way in The Limits of Lord, by Frederic Raphael. In Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis, the hero admonishes himself by saying ‘Have some sense now, you chump’. Rabbit is Rich, by John Updike, has: ‘You chump, that’s not the point.’

   This occurs in the middle of a friendly conversation, spoken by a man to another man. That the term can be used more aggressively is shown in The Choirboys, by Joseph Wambaugh: ‘“Gimme that wallet,” Calvin said suddenly. “Ain’t that illegal search and seizure, Officer?” asked the pimp. “Gimme that wallet, chump, or it’s gonna be a search and squeezure of your fuckin’ neck!”’