Chrysti The Wordsmith: Skedaddle - 1

Greetings and welcome to Christie the wordsmith. The spirited Polly syllable skedaddle has given generations of English speakers a slang a way to designate hasty departure. What happens when we go hunting for the origin of our term skedaddle. Well it turns out that word watchers have been doing this very thing for decades and have little to show for their efforts because no definitive source for the word has been identified. The Oxford English dictionary suggests skedaddle was originally a civil war military slang its first citation is in the New York Tribune of August 10th 1861 in this sentence. Quote No sooner did the traders discover their approach than they Skitt battled. The term here is encased in quotations a signal of a word in its infancy in 1861 skedaddle appears frequently in newspapers books and diaries of the Civil War era with a sense of soldiers or whole troops hastily retreating from battle. The word then quickly crosses into civilian territory and even heads across the Atlantic

by eight hundred seventy nine. A British hunter by the name of Frederick RICHARD POLLOCK uses it in a publication called Sports in British Burma. POLLACK writes There were several hundred elephants about and they all skipped battled making for the hills. The term gained purchase in both American and British English and today it can be found in nearly every dictionary of the language. Next time on Christie the wordsmith theories on the origins of skedaddle Christie the wordsmith are sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises. A high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry sued web dotcom.