We can mosey along or we can saunter. We can shuffle or sashay. How else can we get from here to there?

We can amble, stroll along, skip, jog, and of course walk or run.

We can hop or stagger, crawl or march.

True story.

I used to work in the police computer department. We had developed and just started to use a computer system for tracking all the details of all the incidents logged with the West Midlands Police.
Incidents were graded according to urgency - immediate (10 minute response), urgent (30 minute response) and routine (respond when available).

Meeting these targets was proving to be difficult and we had a senior officer come over to check the logs and find out why. It turned out that the response desk personel were regularly misgrading incidents. The one that sticks in my mind ran to several pages. It had been graded as "immediate".
It started with someone calling in about some sheep which were on some waste ground. A police officer attended. Attempts were made to track down the owner, Attempts to round up the sheep failed (I wish I'd seen that) and the sheep eventually got bored an started to walk away.
The final entry was a request from the control room for a situation update followed by the response from the officer.

"They aren't doing much now, just bimbling off down the road.

The senior officer read through all this, laughed aloud and said "Bimbling ? Bimbling ? Hardly instills it with a sense of urgency does he ?"

Purgamentum init, exit purgamentum

Read all about my travels around the world here.

I thought the police story was going to lead to proceed, which is how all constables describe their progress. Also you can slip, slither and slide along a road.

My favorite word along these lines: Absquatulate!

Coined in the Wild West Era (pre-Civil War plains states, maybe?) for its high-falutin' sound, it means to wander off to rest somewhere else. A perfect example of its use would be I know you think Ol' Paint is tied up outside but your horse has done absquatulated!!

(I know that many US-types go ga-ga over a British accent but for me there's nothing like good ol'-fashioned frontier dialect!)

quote:

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Originally posted by C J Strolin:
My favorite word along these lines: Absquatulate!

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That's a larrupin' good word!

M-W doesn't list it, but the OED defines it as "To make off, decamp"', with quotes from 1837 to 1861. The AHD gives two definitions:

1. a. To depart in a hurry; abscond: “Your horse has absquatulated!” (Robert M. Bird). b. To die.

2. To argue.

It continues:

Mock-Latinate formation, purporting to mean “to go off and squat elsewhere”.

Regional Note: In the 19th century, the vibrant energy of American English appeared in the use of Latin affixes to create jocular pseudo-Latin “learned” words. There is a precedent for this in the language of Shakespeare, whose plays contain scores of made-up Latinate words. Midwestern and Western U.S. absquatulate has a prefix ab-, “away from,” and a suffix -ate, “to act upon in a specified manner,” affixed to a nonexistent base form -squatul-, probably suggested by squat. Hence the whimsical absquatulate, “to squat away from.” Another such coinage is Northern busticate, which joins bust with -icate by analogy with verbs like medicate. Southern argufy joins argue to a redundant -fy, “to make; cause to become.” Today, these creations have an old-fashioned and rustic flavor curiously at odds with their elegance. They are kept alive in regions of the United States where change is slow. For example, Appalachian speech is characterized by the frequent use of words such as recollect, aggravate, and oblige.

I used larrupin' with its cowboy definition in mind, "great, fine" (Bruce Grant's The Cowboy Encyclopdia, 1952, Rand McNally). It also meant "delicious" and was used often by Festus in Gunsmoke. Larrup was molasses and Texans used it in place of sugar, even in coffee. So the next time you get a latte, ask them to put some larrup in it!

The AHD defines larrup as a verb meaning "to beat, flog or thrash", or a noun meaning "a blow". The OED gives the same definition for the verb, with quotes from 1874 to 1970, but doesn't list it as a noun.

Another good word is hornswoggled.
dictionary.reference.com/search?q=hornswoggled

Texas cowboy definitions (www.rice.edu/armadillo/Texas/talk.html)

Tinman

[This message was edited by tinman on Thu Jan 23rd, 2003 at 18:50.]

Tinman, your love of words is obvious. I love it! Your excitement about "absquatulate" caused me to ask around about it, and a fellow logophile told me that she knew of it from an Abraham Lincoln speech. I have spent far toooooo long tonight trying to find that speech. Does anyone know of it?
BTW, I also love hornswoggled and larrup. I agree, CJ, that western dialects are wonderful!

Kalleh, I didn't find a Lincoln speech contining "absquatulate", but I did find a poem Lincoln wrote which contained the words "dinsome" "argufy" and "fice" (found in verses 17, 18 and 19 - http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/poetry.htm)
"Dinsome" is "full of din" in the AHD and "full of din; noisy" in the OED. Quotes in the OED are from 1724 to 1876.

M-W lists "argufy" as a transitive verb meaning dispute or debate, and an intransiteve verb meaning "wrangle" and dates it to 1771. The OED agrees with this definition, adding that it is "a colloquial and dialectal equivalent of ARGUE, usually with the idea of pertinacious or petty argument". The OED's earliest quote is from 1751. The AHD agrees with these definitions, adding "to argue aimlessly" and noting that it is chiefly Southern US.

A "fice" or "feist" is "a small mongrel dog" and is chiefly a Southern US word, according to the AHD.

M-W dates "feist" to 1770.

The OED says "fice" and "feist" are variants of obsolete "fist" and gives quotes for "fice" from 1805 to 1929.

Tinman

[This message was edited by tinman on Mon Jan 27th, 2003 at 21:41.]

[This message was edited by tinman on Mon Jan 27th, 2003 at 21:42.]

Tinman, for some reason I cannot pull up that link. Any hints?

quote:

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
Tinman, for some reason I cannot pull up that link. Any hints?

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I had the same problem.

Don't click on it. cut and paste it into your address bar. The link as posted has accidentally had the closing ) included which is messing it up.

Purgamentum init, exit purgamentum

Read all about my travels around the world here.

Bob was right about me messing up the link to the Lincoln poem by including the closing parenthesis. I fixed it so it should work. The words are in the second poem, "The Bear Hunt".

Tinman

Thanks, Tinman, they are lovely poems. I had not known that Lincoln wrote poetry.

Just today, bumbling my way along the information highway, I found Morgan's opening post about pedestrian locomotion. The word "trudge" came to mind, and I wondered if anyone had mentioned it, so I trudged all the way to the end and did not find it.

Now I shall skedaddle.

~~~ jerry