{"id":496,"date":"2018-07-30T10:16:40","date_gmt":"2018-07-30T14:16:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=496"},"modified":"2018-07-30T10:31:01","modified_gmt":"2018-07-30T14:31:01","slug":"word-of-the-week-harum-scarum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2018\/07\/30\/word-of-the-week-harum-scarum\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week! Harum-Scarum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2018\/07\/harum-scarum.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-498 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2018\/07\/harum-scarum-300x112.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"112\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2018\/07\/harum-scarum-300x112.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2018\/07\/harum-scarum.jpeg 367w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I have had a rather rushed and chaotic week renovating a house we rent, just ahead of new tenants arriving. Thus, I&#8217;ve acted rather harum-scarum about this blog, and that gives me a good opportunity to share a favorite word often found in English Literature before 1900.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oed.com\/view\/Entry\/84414?redirectedFrom=Harum+Scarum&amp;\">OED Online<\/a> shows a likely etymology as a rhyme made up of hare + scare. If you have walked up on a bunny and watched it flee wildly, going one direction, then another, you get a sense of the recklessness and panic of the resulting harum-scarum behavior. The term is not very old, and the oldest example (perhaps misheard by the writer) from the 17th Century is harum-starum!<\/p>\n<p>Wild, rash, reckless, chaotic, running one way, then another! I frequently see it in Dickensian prose about a &#8220;harum-scarum fellow&#8221; one cannot trust to act calmly. Not long ago I chastised a friend about his undependable &#8220;harum-scarum friends,&#8221; knowing that a fellow English Major would get the reference.<\/p>\n<p>This blog will continue all summer, so nominate a word by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.<\/p>\n<p>See all of our Words of the Week\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/tag\/word-of-the-week\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>Image from Nick Park&#8217;s excellent 2005 film <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0312004\/?ref_=nm_knf_t1\">The Curse of the Were-Rabbit<\/a><em>, just because I could not resist.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have had a rather rushed and chaotic week renovating a house we rent, just ahead of new tenants arriving. Thus, I&#8217;ve acted rather harum-scarum about this blog, and that gives me a good opportunity to share a favorite word often found in English Literature before 1900. The OED Online shows a likely etymology as &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2018\/07\/30\/word-of-the-week-harum-scarum\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Word of the Week! Harum-Scarum<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2516,1173,1172,40199,40197],"tags":[2522],"class_list":["post-496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-writing","category-grammar","category-language","category-literature","category-vocabulary","tag-word-of-the-week"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-80","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}