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absquatulate

/ˌæbˈskwɒtʃəˌleɪt/

Run off; leave in a hurry

From Latin ab (away from) + O.French / Latin squat (crouch) + Latin per (through).

verb
verb
ab
Latin
ab
Prefix meaning “away from, off”
English
ab-
Mock-Latin prefixing in jocular coinages; also seen in words like abscond
squat
Old French
esquatir / escatir
“Compress, press down, flatten”
Middle English
squatten
“Crush, flatten,” later “crouch on the heels”
English
squat
The idea of dropping down low; in this word, the base that gets playfully reversed into “get up and go”
per
Latin
per
“Through, by means of”
English
per-
Learned prefix in compounds like perambulate
ambul
Latin
ambulare
“To walk, go about”
English
-ulate
Modelled on Latinate verbs such as perambulate; used here as part of a mock-Latin ending
Combined
absquatulate
A jocular American mock-Latin blend, probably shaped as ab- + squat + -ulate, with extra Latin flavor from perambulate and possibly abscond
American English
absquatulate
Attested by the 1830s; a comic way to say “run away”
Modern English
absquatulate
“

This is one of those gloriously fake-Latin words that sounds as if it escaped from a dusty law book and then tripped over its own feet. By the 1830s it was already turning up in American English, and the joke was basically: make a grand polysyllable out of “get up from your squat and bolt.” That fits the theatrical world where it circulated, especially the swaggering frontier character Nimrod Wildfire in The Lion of the West, whose London stage life helped spread it in 1837 and 1840. You can almost hear the cousinhood: abscond brings the furtive getaway, perambulate lends the Latinate strut, and squat supplies the comic body language. When Civil War slang gave us skedaddle, absquatulate was left looking like the classier, sillier uncle at the family reunion.

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