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The American Heritage� Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition.
2000.
absquatulate
SYLLABICATION: ab�squat�u�late
INTRANSITIVE VERB : Midwestern & Western U.S. Inflected forms: -lat�ed,
-lat�ing, -lates
1. a. To depart in a hurry; abscond: "Your horse has absquatulated!" (Robert
M. Bird) b. To die. 2. To argue.
ETYMOLOGY: Mock-Latinate formation, purporting to mean "to go off and squat
elsewhere".
REGIONAL NOTES: In the 19th century, the vibrant energy of American English
appeared in the use of Latin affixes to create jocular pseudo-Latin
"learned" words. There is a precedent for this in the language of
Shakespeare, whose plays contain scores of made-up Latinate words.
Midwestern and Western U.S. absquatulate has a prefix ab-, "away from," and
a suffix -ate, "to act upon in a specified manner," affixed to a nonexistent
base form -squatul-, probably suggested by squat. Hence the whimsical
absquatulate, "to squat away from." Another such coinage is Northern
busticate, which joins bust with -icate by analogy with verbs like medicate.
Southern argufy joins argue to a redundant -fy, "to make; cause to become."
Today, these creations have an old-fashioned and rustic flavor curiously at
odds with their elegance. They are kept alive in regions of the United
States where change is slow. For example, Appalachian speech is
characterized by the frequent use of words such as recollect, aggravate, and
oblige.
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Ben
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