Pylimitics

It’s the time of year many folks are confronting the near-term results of their “New Year’s Resolutions.” To actually follow through on them, of course, is another story; it needs sustained gumption. That’s the way it is today, at least. In the past following through on resolutions had very little to do with gumption.

This might be partly due to gradual changes in the nature of time and space — changes that we might never really notice because as inhabitants of both, we would be changing too — but it’s probably more due to changes in the meaning of “gumption” itself. The word, that is. 

“Gumption” has been around since at least the 1700s, when it was adopted into English from Scottish dialects. Nobody is quite sure where it originally came from, but it might be related to the Middle English word “gome” (the Scottish version was “gaum”), which meant “attention.” And THAT word might have come from the Old Norse word “gaumr,” which had the same meaning. 

When “gumption” first appeared it didn’t have anything to do with the “drive or initiative” that it means today; instead it meant something close to “common sense” or “cleverness.” While common sense might be related to not making New Year’s Resolutions at all, most people would probably not think that someone who actually DID manage to lose weight after the first of the year was clever. 

It took a couple of centuries for “gumption” to begin to take on the meaning we know today, and it happened gradually. It kept its association with common sense, to which “initiative” was added, as in this quotation from 1889: “If they…show pluck and gumption they…get promoted.” Now, there’s a bit of history that supports this evolution in meaning; the late 1800s offered economic mobility that up to that point had been unthinkable. A serf who was both clever and driven really could move up in the world in those days. 

Another century later “gumption” evolved further in the “initiative” direction and lost virtually all association with cleverness. Today someone with gumption is highly motivated, but could well be dumb as a post. There is one minor codicil to the gumption story; sometime in the first half of the twentieth century there was a commercial product named Gumption — it was a scouring power used for cleaning. It worked because it was an abrasive, so the harder you scrubbed (the more “gumption” you put into it), the better it worked (until you wore the finish right off whatever you were scrubbing, of course). 

It might be possible to delve into the details of whether the product — and the inevitable 20th-century advertising behind it — had some small effect on the English language, but I don’t have the gumption to look into it.