Scran…

Scran is a word I heard my son use, and I guess he picked it from friends… Uni friends, Manchester friends… but it seemed like a new word, and it means ‘food’ or ‘grub’ or ‘tucker’… that sort of thing. Then I saw it used here today so I looked it up. It’s not a new word at all, but dates back to the eighteenth century and maybe a collection of food, for example what you might take on a picnic. It could also mean then, scraps of food, left-overs. Some people claim it is an acronym of sultans, currants, raisins and nuts… doesn’t sound very likely to me! It could also be Liverpudlian in origin, or Northumbrian, or Scottish, or, like many words in the English language, it came from the Navy, or maybe the Australian Navy, or maybe the British Army.  But wait a minute… maybe it comes from the Dutch word schransen meaning to stuff yourself, to gorge on food…  But maybe after  all it is an English word, over two hundred years old,  associated with inns or taverns, but in connection with food

Or maybe it doesn’t originally mean anything to do with food but loose change, or to kiss someone in a very intimate way… In Ireland, ‘bad scran to you’ means ‘bad luck to you’, but whether there is still a connection to food in that ill-wish, I don’t know.

Here’s an interesting site telling you more:

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-scr2.htm

… and here is a nice little recipe site, Jill’s Gradely Scran:

http://www.jill.net/