Stumps
. To stir one’s stumps. To get on faster; to set upon something expeditiously. The stumps properly are wooden legs fastened to stumps or mutilated limbs. (Icelandic, stumpr.)
“This makes him stirre his stumps.”
The Two Lancashire Lovers (1640).
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Entry taken from
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable,
edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.