Some words can boggle the mind

County commissioner, expert angler, and good friend Bill Yancy has been providing linguistic fodder for ‘What’s the Word’ for some time now, and he’s come up with some dooseys. (More on that later.)

At a recent commission meeting, much to my delight, Bill came up to me and said, ‘Hey Charlie, I’ve got something for you.’ Usually when Bill does this, he generally passes along a single word or phrase, but on this occasion he had no less than three, and all good ones. Two of them have to do with movement, ‘skedaddle’ and ‘hightail it,’ while the other, ‘boggle,’ has to do with the mind.

Kind of makes me wonder if Bill is thinking about taking up running. Nah, the mere thought boggles the mind. (Not that he couldn’t, I’m sure, particularly if there was a big bass at stake.)

I’ll start out with skedaddle, in part because I was curious about something else that Bill mentioned in connection with this term, that it was used a lot during the Civil War. Turns out he was quite correct.

The word skedaddle, sometimes spelled ‘skidaddle,’ means ‘to hurry along.’ As in, ‘My wife will be home soon so I’ve got to skedaddle.’

It’s an odd word, and as might be expected, it has a somewhat elusive origin. Some think it is of Swedish or Danish origin, but more often it is connected to the Irish word ‘sgedadol,’ meaning ‘scattered.’

In any case, around the time of the American Civil War it was indeed a popular U.S. military slang term for a hasty retreat from battle. In fact, according to some sources, the Canadian term ‘skedaddler’ referred to Americans who migrated to Canada rather than fight in the Civil War.

Today the term just refers to anyone who hurries along and doesn’t have the suggestion of cowardice hanging over it, so everyone can feel free to skedaddle away.

Much like skedaddle, the term ‘high tail it’ means ‘to leave in a hurry.’ As in, ‘Your mom will have your hide if you’re late for supper, so you better high tail it home right now.’

But unlike skedaddle, high tail it has a much more picturesque origin. It comes from the fact some hoofed animals have a tendency to raise their tails when in flight, including deer and horses. The ‘Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins’ says the term is a Western expression used to described the way a herd of mustangs will break and race away with their tails raised when spooked or frightened.

However, others are convinced the phrase really originated with white tail deer, which have short, sturdy tails that are white on the underside and are raised high when in flight, something many feel is a warning sign to other deer in the area.

Either one makes sense, really, but I kind of like the white tail deer theory. Settlers in America probably saw the deer in the eastern section of the newly discovered continent before they saw mustangs out West.

The word ‘boggle’ is a bit more problematic. Most often used in phrases like, ‘It boggles the mind,’ these days boggle seems to mean ‘generating amazement or confusion.’ But the original meaning of the word ‘boggle’ was ‘to startle, scare or alarm.’ It was thought to come from the Scottish word ‘bogill,’ meaning ‘goblin,’ and is also thought to be the origin of ‘bogey’ as in ‘bogey-man.’ Gee, it’s mind boggling the way words evolve to mean something else entirely, isn’t it?

Also of interest is the fact there is a terrific word game called ‘Boggle,’ played with cubic dice with letters on each side that players have to form into words to earn points. Try it. If you love words, you’ll love the game.

Charlie Johnson is news editor of the Standard. He can be reached at 473-2191.