THE WORDS WE USE

SKIDADDLE, often spelled skedaddle, is a word that has been bothering Jack Morrison of Sandymount, late of New York, as the country…

SKIDADDLE, often spelled skedaddle, is a word that has been bothering Jack Morrison of Sandymount, late of New York, as the country hairdressers used to say in their advertisements. The word's history is what intrigues Mr M. He has consulted the dictionaries and has found no joy.

All of them say that the word is of unknown origin and not older than the 19th century. "Come on now," exhorts Jack, "you wrote once that when in doubt look at the dialects. Any ideas?"

Well now, 1 see that the 1864 edition of Webster, the great American dictionary, has "Said to be of Swedish or Danish origin, and to have been in common use for several years' throughout the Northwest in the vicinity of immigrants from those nations."

But Oxford doesn't agree, as there are no forms in Swedish or Danish sufficiently near to be seriously taken into account. Oxford says that "there is some slight evidence of the currency of the word before it became prominent in America, but it is doubtful how far this is important for its origin."

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This "slight evidence", I think, is the English dialect and Scots word skedaddle, "applied to the wasteful over flow of the milk in pails, when the milk maids do not balance them properly" according to the 19th century Scots word man, Mackay and not long after the American Civil War, the Atlantic journal has a correspondent from Lancashire giving out about what he considered the American misuse of the word "We heard skedaddle every day of our lives. It means to scatter, or drop in a scattering way. If you run with a bucket of potatoes or apples, and keep spilling some of them in an irregular way along the path, you are said to skedaddle them."

The word came into US military slang during the Civil War. The New York Tribune of August 10th, 1861, has "No sooner did the traitors discover their approach than they skedaddled (a phrase the Union boys here apply to the good use the seceshers' make of their legs in time of danger)."

But to Mr Morrison's question. I have convinced myself that the word is not a fanciful formation, as Oxford has decided, but an inspired fusion, of two old dialect words. The first is skid, to slip away. The second is another English North. Country and Scottish word, scaddle, as old as the 15th century. It means to run off in fright. American papers please copy. Oxford and Collins too, if yiz are interested.