QUESTION: Meaning & etymology of "mosey"

[Richard Gage]

These two quotes appear a few paragraphs apart, so the apparent connection
between "mosey" and "Moses" may be pure coincidence.  Who's to say?

THE ROUND-UP: A ROMANCE OF ARIZONA by John Murray and Mills Miller
New York : G.W. Dillingham Company, c1908
< ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext96/rndup10.txt >

CHAPTER I: The Cactus Cross
. . .
"Now I can empty my canteen in the coffee-pot, sure of a fresh supply of water
by the time I am ready to mosey along."
. . . [then a few paragraphs later] . . .

"Gee, I'm a regular Moses," he [the prospector] ejaculated.  "First I bring
water from the face of the rock, and then I lift up the serpent in the
wilderness.  The year I've spent in the mountains and desert seem like forty to
me, and now, at last, I have a sight of the Promised Land.  God, what a
magnificent view!"

"Douglas G. Wilson" wrote:

> >... I'd like to ask you a question about the origin and meaning of the
> >word "mosey."
> >
> >      Example, from _Huckleberry_Finn_: "So I'll mosey along now,
> >      and smouch a couple of case-knives"
>
> It appears that the sense "depart"/"decamp" was earlier than the modern
> sense "amble".
>
> The reference directly to the Biblical Moses makes six suggested origins to
> my knowledge. The others:
>
> (1) from a surname "Moses", belonging to someone who absconded in the early
> 19th Century or so;
>
> (2) from a given name "Moses", attached to a 19th Century peddler who
> ambled along;
>
> (3) from "vamoose" [semantically very apt, and there is a variant "vamose"
> ... however "mosey"is apparently attested earlier than "vamoose"];
>
> (4) from "mose" = "wander in a daze" or so [supposedly in the EDD];
>
> (5) from "mouse" = "flee" [verb form of the noun "mouse"].
>
> I don't know, myself ....
>
> -- Doug Wilson