Those Scalawags!

Okay.

So I’m reading on WorldWideWords.Org and they have this section on (allegedly) "weird words."

On the page for hornswoggle, they state that it is "often assumed to be one of those highfalutin words like absquatulate and rambunctious that frontier Americans were so fond of creating."

WHAT???

I’ll gladly admit (in fact, I’ll proudly insist) that 19th century Americans had a real word-factory going, but by what set of criteria is rambunctious a "highfalutin" word???

That’s a real sockdolager! Those scalawags are trying to hornswoggle us on this one! I’ve a mind to absquatulate their web site and skedaddle! What a bunch of consarned snollygosters!

[DICTIONARY LINK FOR THE 19TH-CENTURALLY CHALLENGED.]

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

3 thoughts on “Those Scalawags!”

  2. Wait a minute, you call them snollygosters for using highfalutin words, whilst you are honeyfuggling your readers like a regular makebate? That sounds a bit pecksniffian to me!

  3. I don’t have access to The One True Dictonary, but hornswoggle is of much older provenance, referring to the insulting of a man who’s wife committed adultery. In medieval times.

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