Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 June 1892 — Skedaddo! [ARTICLE]

Skedaddo!

In the course of a lecture on English composition Mr. Barrett Wendell of Harvard College, as an example of how language is formed, tells an amusing anecdote. While In a sniall Sicilian town some years ago Mr. Wendell was pursued everywhere he went by what he calls “contagiously good-humored beggars.” To rid‘himself of their importunities he turned fiercely upon them and cried: “Skedaddle!” “Somehow, ” says he, “it caugh t their fancy. ‘Skedaddo!’ they shouted in chorus. “When I next went out of doors I was greeted with shouts of ‘Buon giorno skedaddo’ (good-morning, Skedaddo). The rascals had named tne, and called me by the name for the remaining hours of my stay among them." Mr. Wendell adds that a Sicilian gentleman subsequently told him that very probably the word “skedaddo” might become, in the town in question, a permanent generic noun, signifying a light-hearted foreigner of excitable disposition.—Harper’s Young People.