{"id":2501,"date":"2010-03-11T17:47:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-11T17:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=2501"},"modified":"2010-03-11T17:47:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-11T17:47:00","slug":"grubstake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=2501","title":{"rendered":"Grubstake"},"content":{"rendered":"

I came across the word grubstake<\/strong> in a book I’m reading at the moment and it caught my attention because I haven’t seen it before. It appears in the following context: <\/p>\n

\n“From the moment I first arrived back in New York, my father has wanted me to leave the city. He would be happy to grubstake<\/strong> my move to greener pastures.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From this I can guess that grubstaking probably involves providing financial support, though without the context one might guess that it might be a kind of food.<\/p>\n

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary<\/a>, grubstake means:<\/p>\n

1 : supplies or funds furnished a mining prospector on promise of a share in his discoveries
\n2 : material assistance (as a loan) provided for launching an enterprise or for a person in difficult circumstances<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The American Heritage Dictionary<\/a> provides the following definition:<\/p>\n

1. noun Supplies or funds advanced to a mining prospector or a person starting a business in return for a promised share of the profits.
\n2. transitive verb To supply with funds in return for a promised share of profits.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The site Take Our Word For It<\/a> defines a grubstake as <\/p>\n

“a supply of food (grub) which a wealthy investor would provide a gold prospector in exchange for a share (stake) in whatever gold might be found.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It was probably coined during the California gold rush of 1849 and first appeared in writing in 1863.<\/p>\n

Grub has been as a slang word for food since at least 1650 and is still used in this way in the UK. Is it used in other Anglophone countries?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I came across the word grubstake in a book I’m reading at the moment and it caught my attention because I haven’t seen it before. It appears in the following context: “From the moment I first arrived back in New York, my father has wanted me to leave the city. He would be happy to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}