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scrunchions
DCHP-2 (Mar 2014)
Spelling variants:cruncheons, scrunche(o)ns, scrunchings, scrunchins
Scrunchions is the most frequently found form today.
1n. plural — Newfoundland, dated
pieces of animal fat or fish liver, usually after most oil has been removed.
Type: 3. Semantic Change — Scrunchions, a word that has long been used in Newfoundland fisheries in relation to seal or cod liver oil, likely derives from the English dialectal word scrunching(s), meaning 'remnants of food; scraps' (see EDD, s.v. "scrunching" (1)). Clarke (2010b: 118) suggests that because of Newfoundland's profound dependency on the sea and fishing industry, many words have been semantically narrowed to refer mainly to a maritime context, which is the case here.
See: seal fishery
Quotations
1844
The [seal fat] as it is skinned is removed to a stage, where it is chopped into small portions, and then pushed into a vat beneath. Here it is allowed to remain, covered from the sun, until the advancing heat of spring melts the fat from the cellular tissue, which, when the oil has been drawn off, is rejected under the name of scruncheons.
1916
So short and so expensive is coal this year that we have tried every method to economize, and have been firing with the "scrunchings" of cod liver oil, a cake from which the oil has been largely extracted by pressure.
1926
The industry is for the reducing of the residue from cod's livers after the oil has been pressed -- known as "scrunchions," -- to a fine dry meal to be used as chicken food. The "scrunchions" which are collected from various oil factories through the Island are conveyed here by schooners and rail and are broken up into steel pans about forty inches by fourteen and two inches deep.
2n. plural