Chiefly Sc. Also Sc. straemash. [Belongs to STRAMASH v.]
1. An uproar, state of noise and confusion; a ‘row.’
1821. Galt, Ann. Parish, xii. 124. This stramash was the first time that I had interposed in the family concerns of my people. Ibid. (1823), R. Gilhaize, xiv. There’s like to be a straemash amang the Reformers.
a. 1840. J. Ramsay, Poems, Sports Fasten’s-een, v. Mark ye yon fish … He’s laughin’ at the grand stramash, And thinks he’s safe frae harm.
1840. Barham, Ingol. Leg., House-Warm., xxi. Oh! what a fearful ‘stramash’ they are all in!
1861. H. Kingsley, Ravenshoe, xxxvi. Last year at Oxford, I and three other University men … had a noble stramash on Folly Bridge. That is the last fighting I have seen.
1896. Spectator, 28 March, 444. The Muscular Christians rebelled at these ideas with a stir and stramash audible to all men.
2. A state of ruin, a smash. To go (to) stramash: to be ruined.
1819. W. Tennant, Papistry Storm’d (1827), 2. And fearfu’ the stramash and stour, Whan pinnacle cam doun and tow’r.
1829. Brockett, N. C. Gloss. (ed. 2), Stramash, a complete overthrow, with great breakage and confusion.
1896. ‘Ian Maclaren,’ Kate Carnegie, 364. It’s been rotten, a’ wes hearin’, for a while, an’ noo it ’s fair stramash.
1910. N. Munro, in Blackw. Mag., Jan., 32/1. My business would go to stramash.
