Date:    Wed, 24 Jun 1998 20:52:58 -0500
<br>From:    Gerald Cohen <gcohen[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UMR.EDU>
<br>Subject: Re: "skedaddle"
<br>
<br>   In a 6/23/98 message, Patricia Kuhlman wrote:
<br>
<br>       >   An elderly classicist who taught me Homeric Greek asserted that one
<br>>of his professors at Princeton in the early 1930's felt sure that both
<br>>the slang terms  "skedaddle" and "skidoo" came from college students who
<br>>knew the Greek verb, skedannumi, which means to scatter or to disperse
<br>>(often used of people as opposed to things).  I don't know if anyone
<br>>thinks this connection is possible.
<br>
<br>      A Greek etymology for "skedaddle" might seem eminently plausible, but
<br>it was seriously questioned already in 1877 (_Atlantic Monthly_, August
<br>issue, pp.233-234).  American "skedaddle" is first attested early in the
<br>Civil War, while Scottish and  British northern dialectal "skedaddle"
<br>existed already earlier.  Here is part of the article:
<br>
<br>    "...But my English friends lost no time in upsetting my hypothesis [of
<br>the Greek origin of 'skeddadle' in the American Civil War]. 'Why, they
<br>exclaimed, 'we used to live in Lancashire and heard 'skedaddle' every day
<br>of our lives.  It means to scatter or drop in a scattering way.  If you run
<br>with a basket of potatoes or apples and keep spilling some of them in an
<br>irregular way along the path, you are said to skedaddle them.  Or if you
<br>carry a tumbler of milk upstairs and...your gait causes a row of drops of
<br>milk on the stair-case to mark your upward course and awaken  the ire of
<br>the housekeeper, you are said to have skedaddled the milk. ..."
<br>
<br>    The Scottish/ British dialectal use of 'skedaddle' involves scattering
<br>too, of course, but there is a problem here if we try to derive it from
<br>Greek 'skedannumi':  it belongs in a rural setting (e.g. skedaddling of
<br>potatoes) and as such does not seem conducive to Greek influence.
<br>
<br>     A while back I wrestled with the various problems connected with
<br>"skedaddle" and compiled the material I gathered into an article:
<br>"Etymology Of 'Skedaddle' And Related Terms," in _Studies in Slang_,  part
<br>I,  edited by Gerald Leonard Cohen (=_Forum Anglicum_  vol. l4/1;
<br>Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang;    1985,  pp. 29-63.
<br>
<br>--Gerald Cohen
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>gcohen[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]umr.edu
<br>