Rapscallion

Filed Under March 2007, columns 

The pitter-patter of tiny larcenies.

Dear Word Detective: Could you please indicate the origin and definition of the word “rapscallion” or “rapscalion”? — John V. Murphy.

I’ll give it a shot. The usual spelling today is “rapscallion,” although, as we shall see, the spelling varies a bit over the history of this word and its relatives.

“Rapscallion” today is usually used to mean “a rascal” or “a scamp,” a person who may flout society’s conventions, and even, on occasion, break the law, but who falls short of being a major-league evildoer. A “rapscallion” is mischievous, not murderous, often a ne’er-do-well but never a hardened criminal. But before we get too warm and fuzzy about “rapscallions,” we should note that this tolerant connotation of the word is a fairly recent development.

“Rapscallion” first appeared in the late 17th century, but that spelling was apparently a mutation of the earlier “rascallion,” which had appeared in print in 1649. Both words originally carried a more pejorative connotation than “rapscallion” does today; the Oxford English Dictionary defines “rascallion” as “a low mean wretch or rascal.”

That definition contains the key to the origin of the word — “rascallion” is simply “rascal” with the suffix “alion” or “allion” appended. That suffix is, alas, an etymological mystery. Evidently it carried a solidly pejorative meaning back in the 17th century, because it also turns up in “tatterdemalion” (a vagrant dressed in tattered clothing) and “rampallion,” (a ruffian or villain), both of which were current at the time.

“Rascal” is a somewhat older word than “rapscallion” and its relatives, first appearing in English in the early 14th century, drawn from the Old French “rascaille,” meaning “outcast or rabble,” possibly in turn derived from “rasque,” mud or filth. “Rascal” originally simply denoted a member of the lower classes (which is bad enough, given that “filth” stuff), but by the 16th century had come to mean “an unprincipled or dishonest man.”

The transformation in the meaning of both “rapscallion” and “rascal” from “criminal” to “mischievous scamp” seems to have come from the growing use of the terms in a figurative, playful sense, a process which, in the case of “rascal,” was underway by the 17th century (”Sweet Rascal! If your love bee as earnest as your protestation, you will meete me this night at supper,” 1610). Today both “rapscallion” and “rascal” are almost entirely devoid of any real pejorative connotation. The same process has also tamed “tatterdemalion” (today meaning usually just a raggedly-dressed child) as well as “ragamuffin” (originally “Ragamoffyn,” a demon in William Langland’s 1393 epic poem “Piers Plowman,” but now meaning simply “a messy child”).

 

 

Comments

One Response to “Rapscallion”

  1. rmarson on August 19th, 2007 6:46 am

    Could I venture to suggest that rascallion derives from rascal in the same way that medallion derives from medal? In other words, the suffix is simply the augmentative suffix ‘-on’, received through French via *rascaillon* (cf. medaillon - the ‘i’ and ‘l’ likewise change places in the English). Although use of this suffix has been lost in modern French, it continues to be used actively in modern Italian, where the addition of ‘-one’ to a word is often pejorative.

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