To clear off or do a bunk. You can also absquatulate something, meaning to send it away.
The OED suggests it comes from ab (as in abscond) + squat + ulate (as in congratulate), as the OED puts it, "in imitation of a word of Latin origin".
It has the air of a humorous coinage, along similar lines to discombobulate, "disconcert", first attested from the same era (first half of 19c). The OED suggest discombobulate may be humorously based on words like disconcert, and there is an interesting parallel with absquatulate, whose initial syllable abs- reminds us of abscond, in the same way that the dis- at the start of discombobulate makes us think of disconcert and discomfort and similar words.
How common is absquatulate? About 1 in 100,000,000 words so pretty rate and getting rarer, but hopefully this post will help preserve it from extinction.
Here are a couple of quotations from the OED. The first seems jocular.
1830
Cracker Dictionary... Obsquatulate, to mosey, or to abscond.
Georgia Messenger 15 May
The second has a sardonic ring to it.
1990
Some overthrown..dictator who had absquatulated to the USA with his starving nation's treasury.
Word Of The Day — Absquatulate
To clear off or do a bunk. You can also absquatulate something, meaning to send it away.
The OED suggests it comes from ab (as in abscond) + squat + ulate (as in congratulate), as the OED puts it, "in imitation of a word of Latin origin".
It has the air of a humorous coinage, along similar lines to discombobulate, "disconcert", first attested from the same era (first half of 19c). The OED suggest discombobulate may be humorously based on words like disconcert, and there is an interesting parallel with absquatulate, whose initial syllable abs- reminds us of abscond, in the same way that the dis- at the start of discombobulate makes us think of disconcert and discomfort and similar words.
How common is absquatulate? About 1 in 100,000,000 words so pretty rate and getting rarer, but hopefully this post will help preserve it from extinction.
Here are a couple of quotations from the OED. The first seems jocular.
The second has a sardonic ring to it.