Inflected stummed, stumming. Also 7 stumb, 8 stoom. [ad. Du. stommen, f. stom STUM sb.]
1. trans. To renew (wine) by mixing with stum or must and raising a new fermentation.
1656. Flecknoe, Diarium, 26. Such trash in belly e’re to put, As mungrel balderdash Mine Heer, Dutchman has stummed for us there.
1689. Muses Farew. Popery, 88. Had a drunken Tom Tinker the Penance receiv’d, Or a Vintner for stumming his Wine, who’d have griev’d?
1775. Ash, Stoom, (v.t. with wine coopers), to impregnate wines by putting bags of herbs or other ingredients into them. Ibid., Stum (v.t.), to renew wines by raising a fresh fermentation.
b. fig.
1661. C. W., in A. Brome’s Poems, To Author A 8. There strength of fancy, to it sweetness joynes, Vnmixt with water, nor stum’d with strong lines.
1676. Etheredge, Man of Mode, III. ii. 44. Nature has her cheats, stum’s A brain, and puts sophisticate dulness often on the tastless Multitude for true wit and good humour.
1678. Oldham, Let. fr. Country, 204. As the poor Drunkard, when Wine stums his brains, Anointed with that Liquor, thinks he reigns.
1795. Burke, Lett. to W. Elliot, 26 May. When that sad draught … was dashed and brewed, and ineffectually stummed again into a senatorial exordium in the house of lords.
¶ To stum up: to set going, work up. rare–1.
The use may be due to some misapprehension.
1817. Keats, Lett. to Haydon, 28 Sept. At Bailey’s suggestion … we have stummed up a kind of contrivance whereby he will be enabled to do himself the benefits you will lay in his Path.
2. To fumigate (a cask) with burning sulphur, in order to prevent the contained liquor from fermenting; to stop the fermentation of (new wine) by fumigation.
1787. J. Croft, Wines Portugal, etc. 25. Most of the Spanish Wines are stoomed or matcht, as they term it, with brimstone, which also stops the fermentation.
1789. W. H. Marshall, Glouc., II. 358. This expedient is termed ‘stumming the [cider] casks.’
1860. Worcester; and in later Dicts.
Hence Stummed ppl. a., Stumming vbl. sb.
c. 1645. Howell, Lett. (1655), II. lv. 70. This is called stooming of wines.
1664. Sir P. Neile, in Evelyn’s Pomona, 40. [Cider] cannot be unwholsome, upon the same measure that stummed Wine is so.
1666. G. Harvey, Morbus Angl., xxviii. (1672), 77. A kind of crude dull stumb’d Burdeaux.
a. 1694. in C. Mackay, Songs Lond. Prentices (Percy Soc.), 122. All loyal lads of true English race; That scorn the stum’d notion of Spain and France.
a. 1721. Prior, On Passage in Scaligeriana, 2. When you with High-Dutch Heeren dine, Expect false Latin, and stumm’d Wine.
1837. Richardson, Stummed casks are casks fumigated (with brimstone, to prevent the liquor from fermenting).
