If you read Thomas Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow”, an accomplishment for which you deserve congratulations (Pynchon novels are not the easiest books to read), you’ll encounter this passage:
“‘Here then,’ the kindly scombroid face scanning Eventyr, quick as a fire-control dish antenna and even less mercy.”
“Scombroid” sounds like it could be quite the insult; it sort of sounds like “scobberlotcher.” It’s possible that once or twice in its rare appearances it has been intended as an insult, because when applied to a person “scombroid” has to do with appearance. On the other hand there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that anyone other than Thomas Pynchon has ever applied the word to a human.
Humans can be afflicted by “scombroid poisoning,” which is more commonly called “histamine poisoning.” It’s caused by eating food that hasn’t been stored properly, which resulted in bacterial activity that produced histamines. You can get this by eating spoiled cheese, but more to the scombroid point, you can get it by eating spoiled fish. “Scombroid” comes from the Greek “scombros,” which meant “mackerel.” Thus the word “scombroid” today is a zoological term for about a hundred species of fish, including mackerel and swordfish. What Pynchon meant by “scombroid face” was simply that the face had protruding, fishlike eyes. There’s no use asking why he chose that particularly obscure way to describe a character’s appearance; Pynchon has never seemed to be very concerned with making his books particularly clear or accessible. And as far as I’ve heard, he’s a bit of a recluse and doesn’t answer questions.
If he had called someone a “scobberlotcher,” though, his intentions would have been pretty clear indeed. Given the length of the average Pynchon novel, “scobberlotcher” might well be in one of them; it’s the sort of word I think he’d like. It seems to have first been used by Dr. Ralph Kettell, the president of Trinity College in Oxford from 1599 to 1643. He described his undergraduates as “rascal-jacks,” “tarrarags,” “blindcinques,” and, of course, “scobberlotchers.” These were apparently separate categories, each group with their own unique characteristics. He said, in particular about the scobberlotchers, who:
“these did no hurt, were sober, but went idling about the grove with their hands in their pockets and telling the number of the trees there or so.”
Evidently scobberlotchers aren’t violent or malevolent, but just lazy do-nothings. I’d watch out for those rascal-jacks, though. In any case, “scobberlotcher” can be found in the dictionary, if you look in the right one. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that the word might have come from “scopperloit,” which is a period of loitering in some dialects in eastern England, or from “scoterlope,” which means to wander aimlessly. “Scobberlotcher” might even have originated as a result of combining “scopperloit” and “scoterlope.”
If you put aside zoological usage of “scombroid,” the word “scobberlotcher” seems to be used slightly more often, and even relatively recently. Here’s a passage from the 1933 book “Dick Willoughby” by Cecil Day Lewis:
“Good-morrow, Master Richard!” hailed the man, in a voice that matched his person. “What! not abroad yet, thou bed-worm, thou scobberlotcher!”
I wonder what voice would match a person if that person had a “kindly, scombroid face”?
Incidentally, I sounded sort of critical of Thomas Pynchon books above, but he’s definitely worth reading. He can be pretty funny, in fact. His work can be wordy and difficult to read, but really “Gravity’s Rainbow” might be the most dense of any of his books; don’t start with that one. Try “Inherent Vice” first; it’s much shorter, a more conventional story, and easier to read. “Mason and Dixon” is another more accessible work, and interesting as a historical novel in a couple of ways: not only does it tell a story about real historical characters, it’s written as if it had been created in the 1700s. The language, spelling, and grammar are all from that era. It’s quite a feat of writing to pull that off throughout a pretty lengthy novel.
