scamp [M18th] Nowadays most scamps are children but in the 18th century a scamp was a much more serious proposition—a highwayman. In the 19th century the original sense moderated into ‘a swindler, cheat’, a derogatory use still in existence in Caribbean English. The word probably derives from early Dutch schampen ‘to slip away’. This may also be the source of scamper [L17th] although Italian scampare ‘decamp’ is an alternative source. The first recorded sense was ‘run away’. It was very common between 1687 and 1700, and may have been military slang.