Prospectors needed grub, they looked for grubstakers

You can't watch too many old Westerns or read a few Western novels without running into these two words somewhere -- "grub" and "grubstake."

The first was used most commonly as sling for food, "grub" -- but it didn't get that meaning from the Old West. According to Winfred Blevins' "Dictionary of the American West" (which I reference a lot around these parts), "grub" started as a cattle term. It was "an earmark that consisted of cutting off the whole ear of the critter." The use of it for food came from slang dating from mid-17th century Britain, according to Blevins' book.

Of course, once you got to "grub" for food, it was a small step to "grubstake" for the start-up funding and food supplies needed by a prospector, and on to the person who supplied that start-up -- a "grubstaker."

Are you in the market for a grubstake or grubstaker? Perhaps those terms should have been kept alive for investors and venture capitalists in today's world. Yet in a way, those terms are still useful, as there are many people who still do gold prospecting throughout the modern West -- though most as a hobby rather than for living income. Still, when life's pressures get hard and heavy, have you ever thought of putting together a grubstake and heading for the gold in those Western hills and rivers? Go ahead and dream, and maybe you'll run onto the wife and me alongside a mountain stream somewhere one of these days!

About Gary Speer

Gary Speer, aka "Old Hoppy," has been hanging around the Old West since way back when "Hoppy" meant "Hoppalong Cassady," the Clarence E. Mulford Western novel character transformed into a bona fide movie (and later TV) hero portrayed by William Boyd. Gary's "Old Hoppy" nickname came from fun loving friends and family members because of his love for the Old West -- and for all of the American Story in history.