Nitsuh Abebe, the new NY Times On Language columnist (see this post), has a new column (archived) on the word scam. Most of it is about how the word is more popular than ever and has expanded its remit to cover “any system, however legitimate, that ends with somebody profiting at your expense”; while mildly interesting, this is just another example of language change at work, and you’d have to be a dedicated peever to work up much outrage about it. But he includes a section on etymology:
Part of Falcone’s interest in scamming comes from a remarkable place. His grandfather, he says, was a pitchman with traveling carnivals before settling in Atlantic City, where he’d work the piers selling decks of cards rigged for magic tricks. This happens to be the source of the word “scam” itself: All we know for sure, etymologically, is that as of the early 1960s, it was carnival slang for fleecing the public. Beyond that, speculation runs wild. Is it related to “scamp” or “scamper” or “sham?” Does it come from British dialects that used it for “the impurities in rocks and minerals?” From Irish American criminal slang? From the French “escamoter” — to evade, or to conjure away? No theory seems to come with any real evidence. Beyond 20th-century carnies, all is mystery.
So if you’re inclined to set a high bar of deception before calling things scams, you don’t have much history to appeal to; it’s a young word with obscure origins.
I didn’t know any of that — its carny origins, its recency, or its mysterious etymology. The OED (entry published 1982) cites it first from 1963 (“He..worked..as a carny huckster… ‘It was a full scam.’” Time 28 June 48/2) and says simply “Of unknown origin.”
To add to the evidence-free contenders, why not an alteration of “scheme”, or a blend of “scheme” and “sham”?
“any system, however legitimate, that ends with somebody profiting at your expense”
Contrast “spam”, a system that begins with somebody profiting at your expense. For instance by selling you, as meat, something that would make a dog barf.
Upon which you slam them.
Green (here) has some significant antedatings. The earliest is from Damon Runyon (no surprise there), in a 1944 story collection, in the form scamus. The earlier cites don’t look particularly carnival-adjacent — maybe other LH readers can follow up to see.