gumption

Definition

Common sense, initiative, resourcefulness.

Etymology

Borrowed from Scots gumption (“common sense, shrewdness; drive, initiative”); further etymology unknown, possibly connected with Middle English gome (“attention, heed”), from Old Norse gaumr (“attention, heed”), from Proto-Germanic *gaumō. English cognates include gaum (“to comprehend, understand”) and goam (“to recognize, see”).

Example Sentences

• "Gumption, or rum gumption, docility, comprehenſion, capacity."
• "When I see a man who has a good business, sufficient to support his family respectably, neglecting his affairs, and running into debt, in order to obtain a political office, I fancy that, whatever may be his talents, he is not burdened with gumption. […] When I see a man attending diligently to his own concerns, sending his children to school, paying his debts, and keeping clear of law suits, quarrels, and politics, I set him down as a man possessing a reasonable share of gumption."
• "As a balance to genius, which is ideally creative, gumption is required to control, to direct. […] Gumption is the power to realize the poetical worth of common sense. Without that power no man was ever truly great."