{"id":13135,"date":"2012-03-26T00:05:31","date_gmt":"2012-03-26T07:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/?p=13135"},"modified":"2012-03-26T00:05:31","modified_gmt":"2012-03-26T07:05:31","slug":"diddley-squat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/13135","title":{"rendered":"Diddley Squat??"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\tHere\u2019s a fun word: Absquatulate<\/p>\n<p>As in, \u201cHer daddy had a shotgun because we all thought Hank would absquatulate before the wedding.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Or, \u201cI think you forgot to tie up your horse, pardner, because he seems to have absquatulated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Or, \u201cThe police caught those scoundrel bank robbers before they had a chance to absquatulate with all the money.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Say it with me (it\u2019s really fun to say) \u2026 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.howjsay.com\/index.php?word=absquatulate&amp;submit=Submit\">absquatulate<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>What the heck does it mean?<\/p>\n<p>Absquatulate. (ab\u2013skwoch\u2013<em>uh<\/em>\u2013 leyt) Verb. Slang.<br \/>\nTo flee; abscond.<\/p>\n<p>Where did this strange, but perfectly delightful, word come from?<\/p>\n<p>It seems those zany folks back in the early 1800s just loved to engage in fanciful wordplay and make up clever mock-Latinate words. Shakespeare himself did it even earlier than that (good ol\u2019 William\u2014always beating everyone to the punch).\u00a0A mock-Latinate word is a slang or humorous word that\u2019s been made up by putting parts of different words together, the way many English words are made up of their Latin roots.<\/p>\n<p>This particular word is thought to have been formed from three parts: <em>ab<\/em> (as in abscond, meaning off or away), <em>squat <\/em>(meaning sit or settle), and <em>ulate <\/em>(meaning to walk or move, as in perambulate)\u2014all resulting in a strange and wonderful word meaning to get away or move away quickly.<\/p>\n<p>Fanciful, indeed!<\/p>\n<p>Although this word first appeared in the 1830s, I think it\u2019s fun to apply to it everyday life now. Hmm \u2026 let\u2019s see, how can we do that?<\/p>\n<p>How about, \u201cJudging by the amount of snow on the ground, it seems that spring has absquatulated before it even arrived.\u201d\u00a0 (I just looked out the window and this one came to mind.)<\/p>\n<p>Or, \u201cSometimes when things get too crazy, I just want to absquatulate to my garden, where all I can hear is the friendly hum of the honeybees.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I like it.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here\u2019s a fun word: Absquatulate As in, \u201cHer daddy had a shotgun because we all thought Hank would absquatulate before the wedding.\u201d Or, \u201cI think you forgot to tie up your horse, pardner, because he seems to have absquatulated.\u201d Or, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/13135\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/13135\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[24,370],"class_list":["post-13135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gleaming_word","tag-absquatulate","tag-gleaming-word-a-week"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}