Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Skedaddle!

Skedaddle! Oh, what a perfect word! I say it out loud, and I swear I can hear the sound of scuffling feet hurrying away....

Well, there you go for a definition. But if you want something more authoritative and historical, keep reading for edification on skedaddle from Americanisms, Old and New by John Stephen Farmer (1889).
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skedaddle, to—To depart hurriedly; to run away. Cf. ABSQUATULATE.

But the entry doesn't stop there. It goes on, and on, for almost an entire page. Here's the start of the discussion:

...De Vere succinctly summarizes the various conflicting theories as to its origin thus: —"the word skedaddle even crossed the Atlantic, and was once gravely discussed in Parliament. It appeared in print, probably for the first time, immediately after the battle of Bull Run, and was at once caught at and repeated all over the country. In answer to inquires about its origin, some Irishmen at once claimed it as their own...

The entry goes on to suggest the Scandinavians from Wisconsin might have introduced the word during the Civil War, and then peers back in time to trace the word to a Greek verb...

Well, heck, I can't figure out how to recreate all the Greek letters here, so I'll just point you to the entry, which is quite the fun essay to read.

Floyd's Retreat From Fort Donelson, With a Running Description of the Battle. By Skedaddles.
Published 1862 by A.C. Peters & Bro. in Cincinnati.

The Online Etymology Dictionary scratches its head over the origin, discounts De Vere (mentioned above), and offers this:

"to run away," 1861, American Civil War military slang, of unknown origin, perhaps connected to earlier use in northern England dialect with a meaning "to spill." Liberman says it "has no connection with any word of Greek, Irish, or Swedish, and it is not a blend" [contra De Vere]. He calls it instead an "enlargement of dial. scaddle 'scare, frighten.'" Related: Skedaddled; skedaddling. As a noun from 1870.

World Wide Words, in a discussion of skedaddle, pretty much sums up the mystery of its genesis thusly:

This archetypal American expression ... has led etymologists a pretty dance in trying to work out where it comes from.

The WWW post goes on to point out that skedaddle moved quickly from the U.S. to the U.K. and even appears in Anthony Trollope's novel The Last Chronicle of Barset in 1867: “ ‘Mamma, Major Grantly has — skedaddled.’ ‘Oh, Lily, what a word!’ ”

What a word indeed!

Time to skedaddle!
Der fliehende Liebhaber by A. Buzzi [Public domain]