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vamoose: msg#00029

culture.language.word-of-the-day

Subject: vamoose

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The Word of the Day for April 29 is:

vamoose \vuh-MOOSS\ verb
: to depart quickly

Example sentence:
With Sheriff Barclay and his posse hot on their tails, the bank robbers
knew they had better vamoose.

Did you know?
In the 1820s and '30s, the American Southwest was rough-and-tumble
territory -- the true Wild West. English-speaking cowboys, Texas Rangers, and
gold prospectors regularly rubbed elbows with Spanish-speaking vaqueros in the
local saloons, and a certain amount of linguistic intermixing was inevitable.
One Spanish term that caught on with English speakers was "vamos," which means
"let's go." Cowpokes and dudes alike adopted the word, at first using a range
of spellings and pronunciations that varied considerably in their proximity to
the original Spanish form, but when the dust settled, the version most American
English speakers were using was "vamoose."







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