[Ads-l] Skedaddle, skedaddling (incremental antedating to 1858?; 1859)

[Jonathan Lighter]

More great work, Bonnie.

Of more general interest:

1862 _Bristol Mercury and Daily Post_ (Oct. 25) 6:  YANKEE VILLAGES.--The
following are names of post villages in the United States, copied
_verbatim_ from the official Post-office Directory:--Social Circle,
Sociality, Tenth Legion, Number One, Number Two, Why Not, Wild Cat, Uncle
Sam, Usquebaugh, Lucky Hit, Esperance, Marrow Bone, Oat Meal, Lion,
Bugaboo, Little Muddy, Little Chuckey, Lion Beard, Joe's Lick, Bug Swamp,
Coffee, Gentry, Dirty-town, Halfmoon, Hat, Hartshorn, Halfday, Haystack,
Henpeck, Sub Rosa, Skidaddle, Queer-street, Ticklewhat, Hoganmogan,
Dustyfoot.

Further deponent sayeth not.

JL

On Tue, Mar 16, 2021 at 3:23 PM Bonnie Taylor-Blake <b.taylorblake at gmail.com>
wrote:

> "Skedaddle" and variants have come up on the list before, with John Baker
> pushing this back to December, 1859. See his post and follow-ups:
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2016-April/141953.html.
> (BTW, OED still shows as its earliest example one from 1861.)
>
>
> 1) Here's something from McGregor, Iowa, in the fall of 1858, which
> suggests that a form of "skedaddle" was at least in place there. I'm not
> sure what "we will make it 'Skeedaddle'" means in the first text, though
> "Skeedaddle" is, according to the second, clearly a nickname for someone
> named Harrington. So, "we will make it 'Skeedaddle'" is obviously some sort
> of wordplay. (I wish "Skeedaddle" here meant "scatter," but does it seem to
> imply "appear"?)
>
> ------------------------
>
> We were trout fishing last week and had a "gel--orious" time but our
> columns are too crowded now to do justice to the trip -- Sawyer & Co will
> please hold their poles till our next issue -- "Jim Wing" will be
> immortalised and Wauzeka made classic ground -- if our pen does not fail
> us, we will make it "Skeedaddle". Saywer will please have that picture
> interred. [From "Fishing," The Weekly North Iowa Times (McGregor), 20
> October 1858, p. 2.]
>
> Not long since it was our good fortune to accompany a few friends on a
> little tour of exploration in Crawford Co., Wisconsin. There were Clark,
> the "Doc." and "Squatter Sovereignty" alias Sawyer, of Prairie du Chien,
> and "Skeedaddle" or Harrington and the writer, of McGregor. [From "A
> Fishing Trip," The Weekly North Iowa Times (McGregor), 27 October 1858, p.
> 2.]
>
> (The newspaper also mentions "'Skeedaddle,' alias Harrington" in its 16
> February 1859 issue, p. 2).
>
> ------------------------
>
> 2) We've touched on an anecdote about "a Hoosier, an awful ugly man," which
> ends in "You'd oughter seen that gang skedaddle." It's this sketch that had
> brought us the earliest appearance of the word, in December, 1859. (John
> Baker's post again:
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2016-April/141953.html.)
>
> Note, though, that this anecdote seems to have been first published at
> least as early as 1 December 1849 (Chambersburg, Pennsylvania), so a decade
> earlier, though there the last line reads,
>
> "You oughter'a seen that gang scatter."
>
> The "scatter" form persists in printings in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana,
> Wisconsin, Vermont, and New York until 1851. (The anecdote also sometimes
> appeared without that final punchline, so no "you ought to have seen that
> gang scatter." This truncated version appeared in an 1857 issue of "Yankee
> Notions" as well, which may be of interest to Peter Reitan.)
>
> In the summer of 1859, the tale seems to have reemerged, appearing in
> newspapers in California, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maine, at least,
> still with the "scatter" punchline in place.
>
> But the versions printed in The Sioux City [Iowa] Register on 11 August
> 1859 and in The Red Wing [Minnesota] Sentinel two days later have
> substituted "skedaddle" for "scatter." (So, this is the same telling John
> Baker shared with us.)
>
> The anecdote appears again, however, with "scatter" back in place in Ohio,
> Iowa, and Wisconsin in August and September, until The Bucyrus [Ohio]
> Weekly Journal (10 September 1859) uses "skedaddle" in place of "scatter."
>
> It's hard to know where this anecdote's "skedaddle" came from, whether its
> placement was original to someone at the Sioux City paper, who simply
> removed "scatter" from the piece he was about to print and substituted
> "skedaddle," or whether it had already appeared elsewhere with "skedaddle"
> for "scatter." Someone, somewhere, sometime, though, made the substitution,
> perhaps for humorous effect. (I mean, "skedaddle" sounds funnier to me than
> "scatter" does. And I doubt the original form featured "skedaddle," with a
> decade's worth of editors changing the word to "scatter" until Sioux City
> slipped up.)
>
>
> 3) "Skedaddling" (verb).
>
> (I include it not only because it's early, but also because that to me it
> gives a sense of barreling in and not so much fleeing or retreating.)
>
> On Friday last a freight car belonging to a downward bound train on the
> Illinois Central Railroad took fire about eight miles north of the city,
> and came "skedaddling" in all ablaze. It was taken to the water tank and
> subjected to a pour bath, which soon extinguished the flames. [From "An
> Urgent Call," The Daily Pantagraph (Bloomington, Illinois), 22 September
> 1859, p. 2. The Pantagraph credits "Kankakee Gazette, 15th" for this piece,
> so presumably it appeared just a week before in that Illinois newspaper.]
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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>


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