DCHP-2

grubstake ((n.)) [grub food + stake] DCHP-1 (pre-1967)

• 1 † n.

  an arrangement by which a person or company provides money to outfit a prospector with food and equipment in return for a share (often one half) in any strike the prospector may make; also, the money or supplies involved in such an arrangement.

  • 1899  They . . . were determined to return to their old stamping grounds, where any honest prospector can get a grubstake from a speculative city man. . . .
  • 1928  The leader, too embittered to go back into the ministry, borrowed a grubstake and turned prospector.
  • 1958  But Henderson stayed on, lured by Ladue's promise of a grubstake, and for the next two years he stubbornly combed the Indian and its tributaries for gold.

• 2 n. — Fur Trade

  an advance in the form of food and other supplies, to be paid for out of the coming season's catch.

  See also: debt (def. 1)  

  • 1900  "What fur we keel now? Not enough to pay fer de grub stake."
  • 1963  Trappers are assisted by provision of grubstakes and equipment to enable them to reach and remain on their traplines during periods of peak production when the pelts are prime.

• 3 n.

  the money or the means to obtain food and other necessaries for a certain period of time.

  See also: stake   

  • 1897  . . . no place is very rich, but no place is very poor; every man can make a "grub stake" (that is enough to feed and clothe him for a year), which is more than I can say of the other places I have been in.
  • 1912  (1914)  Some spend their life going from one camp to another as labourers, others are homesteaders and farmers, and are here for a few months to make a "grub-stake."
  • 1936  He seemed quite cheerful over it all so I gave him back his job and he started to amass another "grub stake."
  • 1963  My partner and I relocated a claim at that first midnight session that afterward turned out to be our grubstake, our bank, so to speak. . . . We could always go out to the claim if a grubstake was wanted and pound out an ounce a day; that is, $16.00.

• 4a n.

  a store or supply of provisions.

  • 1909  
    The men who can't remember when they learned to swing a pack,
    Or in what lawless land the quest began;
    The solitary seeker with his grub-stake on his back,
    The restless buccaneer of pick and pan.
  • 1912  He built a fire on the bank and spread his meager grub-stake in a score of dirty little canvas bags to dry beside it.
  • 1953  The Indian agency will help this pair to obtain new equipment and grubstake and clothing; no old age pension for Maurice, even if he is 68!

• 4b n.

  the food itself.

  • 1923  So he kicked over the traces of respectable conformity, and took to the woods with an outfit of seasoned "sour-doughs," wearing the clothes they wore and dividing the high cost and the tough chewing of their grub-stake.

• 5 n.

  a mining claim providing a modest income; a claim that produces a relatively small amount of gold.

  See also: grubstake claim  

  • 1909  It's wine and painted women and the things that do me hurt,/Till I crawl back, beggared, broken to the Wild./ Till I crawl back, sapped and sodden, to my grubstake and my tent . . . .
  • 1958  Thomas Latheen had seventy-five grub stakes here and went to Victoria to get permission to build a tunnel one mile long, as in Denver, Colorado.