absquatulate

I’ve picked this because it’s nice to say. Go on, give it a go. Ab-squat-ulate. And, because it sounds like ‘sasquatch’ which is also nice to say.

Now we’ve all finished saying it, we should probably talk about what it means. It’s a relatively young word, only appearing in the mid 19th century. It means to leave quickly or abruptly. So you could say ‘the sasquatch absquatulated’. I’m not sure what situation you’d have to be in which would make it appropriate to say this, but never mind.

 ‘Absquatulate’ came about as part of an odd trend in 1830s America for making up words that sounded vaguely Latin (and therefore, presumably, clever). It’s probably a blend of ‘abscond’, ‘squattle’ which means ‘squat down’, and ‘perambulate’. Some other words that came out of this include ‘discombobulate’ and ‘bloviate’, which are also fun to say.

We had something similar on this side of the pond with grammatical rules, where the Victorians decided to impose Latin grammar rules on English, even though they don’t actually apply. That’s one of the reasons lots of us were taught that it’s wrong to start a sentence with ‘and’ or ‘but’ when in fact, it isn’t (don’t believe me? Here’s the OED saying that it’s absolutely fine).