Wordcatcher (40 page)

To kidnap and secret away aboard a ship
. A clandestine word conjured up in San Francisco’s Chinatown during the Gold Rush years. The story goes and goes that ships docking in San Francisco Bay had usually been away at sea for years, leaving their crews depleted. The solution for many a captain was to walk from the wharf up Broadway to Grant Avenue and into Chinatown, where they stopped at bars called “deadfalls.” In collusion with the bar owners, the captains plied sailors on leave with free drinks, often with a “Mickey
Finn” dropped in for good measure. The unsuspecting Jack-Tars were then led to trap doors that dropped them into perilously dark basements, where they were bound and tied until the next morning. Then, usually still drugged, they were frog-marched to the harbor. As if in a bad movie, the hungover sailors woke up days later to find themselves halfway to Shanghai. Thus, to be
shanghaied
means to be fooled, with desperate consequences. Companion words include
press-gang
, a group of mercenary sailors who trawl the docks and back alleys for men they can strong-arm into maritime work. Surprisingly,
crimp
, from Dutch
krimpe
, meaning “a confined place for fish till wanted,” has similar origins. Smyth wrote in 1867 that ship agents loaned money to sailors on leave, a practice that “indebts the
dupes
, and when well plied with liquor are induced to sign articles, and are shipped off, only discovering their mistake on finding themselves robbed of all they possessed.”

Shanghaied

To run away
. No one knows for sure; the true origins themselves have
skedaddled
into the shadows of linguistic history. Speculation has it that the word was minted during the American Civil War as military
slang
, possibly from Scottish-Irish immigrant soldiers’ use of the old Gaelic
skiddle
, to spill, scatter; this may be connected to an earlier use in northern English dialect,
sket
, rapidly, and
daddle
, to walk unsteadily. Thus, a word picture emerges of a terrified or disgruntled soldier “lighting out or leaving in a hurry,” and then, as the war dragged on, “breaking away and running from battle.” Companion words include
scat
,
scoot, skidoo
, as in “23-Skidoo,” probably from
skedaddle
. Medieval folklore ascribes
skedaddle
to “the wasteful overflow of milkmaid’s milk,” from Gaelic
squit
, wander, and
allta
, wild. Other memorable Irishisms of the period:
so long
, from the Irish
slan
, farewell, and the rambunctious
shenanigans
, which Robert MacNeil in
The Story of English
playfully traces back
to the Irish “I play like a fox.” The explosive
smithereens
is rooted in
smither
, small fragment, the result perhaps of a few too many donnybrooks. Uncertainty never sounded so uncertain as it does in
swither
, as in “That put me in an eerie
swither
,” or the
swithering
factor in a hotly contested election in which the voters are unable to make up their minds, from Scandinavian
swidder
, uncertain.

To make oblique, slanting, distorted; to twist and turn; to shy away from
. To discover the roots, this is the route we have to take.
Skew
derives from the Middle English
skewen
, to turn aside, which came from the Old High German
sheuen
, to avoid, and its adjective,
sheu
, shy, as in timid, but also “to shy away from.” In Middle English
shey
is “a shy horse.” Thus to
skew
is to turn aside, out of fear, like a
shying
horse, or to distort out of recognition. The modern sense appears in a December 2009 edition of the
Hollywood Reporter:
“Advance ticketing for James Cameron’s sci-fi actioner
Avatar
is
skewing
heavily toward male moviegoers, but sales are going so strongly that it shouldn’t represent a problem.” Companion words include the whimsical
slantandicular
, a
posilutely
vibrant synonym for
perpendicular
.

An old nautical term to describe an English sailor’s game of climbing the rigging to the masthead, and then sliding down the backstays for the sheer fun of it.
Once deemed a sport for “English
thrill
-seeking sailors,”
skylarking
has slid down the language to become one of our most vivacious verbs, generally referring to a pleasant jaunt, a getaway. Originally, it was
skylacing
. First recorded in 1809,
skylacing
was “wanton play about the rigging, and tops,” later corrupted to
skylarking,
a compound of
sky
and
lark
, an old English word meaning “to frolic or play.” Metaphorically, it now encompasses the modern European sense of the songbird, from Middle English
larke
and Old English
lawerce
, though there is also evidence of a Greek proverb, “With even the unmusical, the
lark
is melodious.” The old English phrase “to rise with the lark,” meant to get up early in the morning. Nowadays, a
lark
is a “spree or frolic or pleasant jaunt.” Companions include: “To a
Skylark
,” a poem by Shelley, Skylark, a popular Buick from 1953-1972, and “Skylark,” the love song written by Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer in 1941.

Street talk, abusive language, a colorful rap
. Uncertain origins, but most scholars agree it appears first in secret language of the underworld in the 18th century. John Ayot argues that
slang
is the direct descendant of
cant
. The most vivid
theory takes it back to the early Icelandic
slyngva
, to sling, which influenced other words across Scandinavia such as the Norwegian
sleng
, to throw around offensive language, and
slengja
, to toss abuse, from
slengjakjeften
, to sling the jaw. Thus,
slang
is the tossing around of wild words, insults, hipster talk—what is sometimes called in American
slang
“jaw-boning.” Leave it to Robert Frost to give it a modern twist. “
Slang
,” he said, is “a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands, and goes to work.” Companion words include
slang-whanger
, a nickname for the English essayist William Hazlitt. In his classic work
American Slang
, H. L. Mencken writes, “College
slang
is actually made by the campus wits, just as general
slang
is made by the wits of the newspapers and theaters.” Companion words include
argot
, an old French synonym for
slang
that meant “to tear, from beggars’ clothes”—an effective way to describe how educated people rip—borrow—so many colorful words from people reduced to living on the streets and
sling
them around in their music, poetry, movies, dissertations.

A saying, advertisement, a shout to the sky.
In ancient Scotland and Ireland
sluagh-ghairm
was the war cry of the army, the host-cry, or gathering word of a border clan; “a war cry, meaningful one, perhaps name of chief of clan, or place, so a rallying cry or password by Highlanders and Borderers.” In 1808, Sir Walter Scott introduced the word
into English use in his novel
Marmion
: “The Border
slogan
rent the sky, A Home! A Gordon! Was the cry!” First an Indian, then a cowboy, always a brilliant Cherokee comedian, Will Rogers got the contemporary sense of it right when he quipped, “You shake a
slogan
at an American and it’s just like showing a hungry dog a bone.” Companion words include the modern
sloganeering
, which generally means reducing complex ideas to whatever can fit on to a placard. A popular synonym is
brand
, compressing the qualities of a product to a
slogan
or tagline that stands for
the brand
.