Scoundrel
Posted: Tue May 03, 2005 10:54 pm
I just read this word somewhere else, and it occurred to me that it would make a great GW suggestion...
The sound of it is so ... intense!
-Tim
The sound of it is so ... intense!
-Tim
I hadn't remembered the "anti-Confederate Southerner" connotations! And I think I always spelled it (in my mind) 'scallywag'...scalawag
"disreputable fellow," 1848, Amer.Eng., originally in trade union jargon, of uncertain origin, perhaps an alteration of Scottish scallag "farm servant, rustic" (by influence of wag "habitual joker"). An early recorded sense was "undersized or worthless animal" (1854), which suggests an alteration of Scalloway, one of the Shetland Islands, in allusion to little Shetland ponies. In U.S. history, used from 1862 of anti-Confederate native white Southerners.