Scarf the noun has nothing to do with food, but scarf the verb does. Usually found in phrases such as scarf down, the verb means to eat greedily, and first appeared in the United States in 1960. Scarf, however, is simply a variant of an older word, scoff, meaning to eat greedily, which dates back to the mid nineteenth century. Likewise, scoff arose as a mere variant of scoff, which dates back to the eighteenth century, and which also meant to eat greedily. It seems probable, too, that this scajf is connected to an earlier scajf, a word used in Scotland meaning to beg for food in a humiliating manner; indeed, in Scotland scajf is still used as a noun to mean tramp or scavenger. Even further back, the source of the Scottish scajf might be the German schaffen, meaning to acquire. The Oxford English Dictionary speculates that British soldiers serving in Continental wars in the fifteenth century might have picked up the German word schaffen, and introduced it to English on their return. As for the other scarf, the one that wraps around your neck, it derives from the Norman French escarpe, which originally denoted a sash slung diagonally across the body, from shoulder to hip, in which items could be carried. Scarf did not acquire its current “neckwarmer” sense until the early nineteenth century.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Scarf the noun has nothing to do with food, but scarf the verb does. Usually found in phrases such as scarf down, the verb means to eat greedily, and first appeared in the United States in 1960. Scarf, however, is simply a variant of an older word, scoff, meaning to eat greedily, which dates back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-s"],"yoast_head":"\n