Word Routes
Exploring the pathways of our lexicon
Skedaddle, Scadoodle, Skidoo, Skadoosh!Mon Jun 30 00:00:00 EDT 2008By Ben Zimmer
In Sunday's Boston Globe I fill in for Jan Freeman, who writes a regular language column called "The Word." My topic is a silly new word that appears in the movie "Kung Fu Panda": skadoosh. It came from the fertile mind of Jack Black, voice of Po the Panda, who was inspired by an equally silly old slang expression, 23 skidoo. And skidoo probably came from scadoodle, which in turn is a variant of skedaddle. Whew!
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