urban bumpkin lore: roots and sources
there is plenty more to say about this useful particle of lollardry but to kick things off
i. sarah seemed to saying the word BUMPKIN derived from a comical mispronunciation of the word LOCAL — which is awesome ambitious as mispronunciations go! (she was talking abt YOKEL obv but didn’t quite say so)
ii. like all other excellent words, bumpkin derives from the DUTCH = “boomken” meaning a YOG LOG
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Tim on November 29th, 2007
Some speculation in the pub last night that bumpkin had not-very-hidden 1nc35t reference.
FT's Alix on November 29th, 2007
dictionary.com, not my normal etmological source, but whatevs, sa this:
The term bumpkin may at one time have been directed at an entire people rather than that segment of the population living in a rural area. The first recorded appearance of the word in 1570 is glossed by the Latin word Batavus, “Dutchman,” making plausible the suggestion that bumpkin may come from either the Middle Dutch word bommekijn, “little barrel,” or the Flemish word boomken, “shrub.” The connection would be between a squat object and the short rotund figure of the Dutchman in the popular imagination. Any bumpkin would surely prefer this etymology to the suggestion that bumpkin is a derivative of bum, “the rear end.”