Skedaddle word origin3/31/2023 ![]() ![]() The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language says the earliest appearance of “ hornswoggle” was actually in 1829, a year short of the 30s. ![]() Michael Quinion, on his World Wide Words website, writes: “The 1830s-a period of great vigour and expansiveness in the US-was also a decade of inventiveness in language, featuring a fashion for word play, obscure abbreviations, fanciful coinages, and puns.” Among the inventions that didn’t survive, he says, were “ blustrification (the action of celebrating boisterously), goshbustified (excessively pleased and gratified), and dumfungled (used up).” Many other hits, for both the “woggle” and “waggle” spellings, appeared to be the result of inadvertently mushing together “boondoggle” and “hornswoggle.” The rest strike me as humorous attempts at wordplay, which is interesting because “hornswoggle” came into being (along with “absquatulate,” “bloviate,” “discombobulate,” and “skedaddle”) during an especially inventive period in American English. Many of the “boonswoggle” hits referred to one of the Boos, characters in the Nintendo video game Luigi’s Mansion. I had almost 200 hits, however, when I Googled “boonswoggle” and “boonswaggle.” Is it legitimate?Ī: I hadn’t heard the word before and couldn’t find it when I went to my traditional language references, including the Oxford English Dictionary. ![]() Q: I’ve been seeing the word “boonswoggle” a lot lately, especially online, but I can’t find it in my dictionary. ![]()
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