{"id":6229,"date":"2023-01-24T17:23:33","date_gmt":"2023-01-24T17:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=6229"},"modified":"2023-01-24T17:25:21","modified_gmt":"2023-01-24T17:25:21","slug":"word-of-the-day-gumption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2023\/01\/24\/word-of-the-day-gumption\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Gumption"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today\u2019s word of the day, thanks to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is gumption<\/em>. Dictionary.com says that gumption<\/em> is an informal noun (that is like saying it is a slang word) that means 1) initiative; aggressiveness; resourcefulness; 2) courage; spunk; guts; and 3) Chiefly British<\/em> Dialect<\/em>: common sense; shrewdness. According to etymonline.com, the origin of the word is Scottish, with that third definition, and that it is \u201cpossibly connected with Middle English gome<\/em> \u2018attention, heed,\u2019 from Old Norse gaumr<\/em> \u2018heed, attention.\u2019\u201d That speculation suggests that early modern English went 200 years with no extant record of the word, which is, I suppose, possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Merriam-Webster says that the \u201cterm’s exact origins aren’t known, but its earliest known uses are found in British and especially Scottish dialects (which also include the forms rumblegumption<\/em> and rumgumption<\/em>).\u201d That assertion makes me wonder why we don\u2019t hear rumblegumption<\/em> on at least a daily basis. M-W says further, \u201cBy the 1860s, American English speakers were also using gumption<\/em> to imply ambition or tenacity, but it wasn’t until the early 1900s that gumption<\/em> began to appear in English texts as a direct synonym of courage<\/em> or get-up-and-go<\/em>.\u201d It also includes a claim by P. T. Barnum that gumption was a type of hard cider, but that meaning is at most archaic, and perhaps something Barnum just made up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this day in 1935, the first beer in a can was sold in Richmond, VA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The brewery that sold the first beer in a can was the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company out of Neward, NJ. The company has a little bit of history. John Liable partnered with Louis Adam in the founding of a brewery, and Liable invited his nephew, Krueger, to come and help with it. Krueger was just 16 when the invitation came. In 1865, Krueger bought out the Adam Brewery, with the help of Gottlieb Hill, but when Hill died in 1875, Krueger became the sole owner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Krueger did well in the brewing business and bought several other breweries over the next few decades. He also built a 40-room mansion in 1888 in Newark, on what is today Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard. The company survived Prohibition by making near beer and soda. Near beer, for those of you who have never heard of it, was a low-alcohol product encouraged by the anti-alcohol folks even before Prohibition, and it was legal to manufacture and sell during Prohibition. It had to contain less than .5% alcohol. Most beers today contain anywhere from 4% to 7%, with some exceptions, like Sierra Nevada Big Foot, which is 9.6% alcohol by volume. According to a webpage from American Heritage, \u201cMark Twain is said to have made the definitive remark on this beverage when he said, \u2018The man who named it near beer was a poor judge of distance\u2019\u201d (https:\/\/www.americanheritage.com\/near-beer<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gottfried Krueger died in 1926, in the middle of the Prohibition era, but his company was well position when our nation\u2019s stupidest Amendment was finally repealed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The American Can Company, which incorporated in 1901, was actually looking for a brewer that would sell beer in cans, probably because its owners were looking to expand its market. It convinced Krueger to give the idea a try, in part by giving the brewery the necessary machinery to can the beer with the promise that Krueger would not have to pay unless the sale of beer in cans proved to be a success. The process started in 1934, with Krueger giving cans of beer to employees and friends, just to try it out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then Krueger shipped 2,000 cans of beer from Newark to Richmond, VA, for sales that began on this date in 1935. Why Richmond, VA, you ask. Richmond was the furthest point of Krueger\u2019s distribution market, and the brewery was worried about blowback if the beer did not prove to be popular. Krueger had nothing to worry about. The sale of beer in cans was very popular, especially among bar owners. One of the selling points was that the cans were not breakable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The success of beer in cans is obvious. Perhaps on this Beer Can Appreciation Day (yes, January 24 is just that), you might appreciate the gumption of The American Can Company and Krueger Brewing for taking a chance on new technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The image today is of an early advertisement for Krueger in a can (https:\/\/seletyn.com\/2021\/01\/27\/jan-24-1935-gottfried-krueger-brewing-company-and-the-first-canned-beer\/<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s word of the day, thanks to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is gumption. Dictionary.com says that gumption is an informal noun (that is like saying it is a slang word) that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6230,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[408,448,395,239],"class_list":["post-6229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","tag-beer","tag-can","tag-etymology","tag-words","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6231,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6229\/revisions\/6231"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}