Sunday Word: Absquatulate

[sallymn]

absquatulate [ab-skwoch-uh-leyt]

verb:
to flee; abscond

Examples:

The AU deputy envoy to Somalia has been authorized to vacate or absquatulate Somalia within seven days with effect from today. (Mohamed Hussein Mentalist, Federal Government Of Somalia Had Set Seven Days Ultimatum To Africanunion Envoy To Absquatulate The Country, Modern Ghana, November 2021)

Raffles, the Gentleman Thug is up to his usual tricks, "Don't forget your red flag, Bunny! We've got to absquatulate before the Scuffers get here!" (Mohamed Hussein Mentalist, Book review: Viz: The Trumpeter’s Lips 2020, Chris Hallam's World View, December 2019)

When I was a lad, the Cryptic Corporation - the team that has managed the Residents since 1976 - meant Homer Flynn and Hardy Fox, at least after their partners, John Kennedy and Jay Clem, absquatulated in '82. (James Gingell, Exclusive Video And Music From The Residents' New Album, 'Intruders', Dangerous Minds.net, October 2018)

People absquatulate from large parties (never small ones) all the time, and after 50, I think we do it more often, though I have not found any agreement on the subject. (Rachel Arons, The Art of Absquatulating: Is It Ok To Leave A Party Without Saying Goodbye?, betterafter50.com, September 2016)

Prudence warned them to absquatulate, and they determined to cut their lucky, before the inevitable dénouement. (G Hamilton-Browne, Camp Fire Yarns of the Lost Legion)

Origin:

"run away, make off," 1840, earlier absquotilate (1837), 'Facetious US coinage' perhaps based on a mock-Latin negation of squat (v.) 'to settle'. Said to have been used on the London stage in in the lines of rough, bragging, comical American character 'Nimrod Wildfire' in the play The Kentuckian as re-written by British author William B Bernard, perhaps it was in James K Paulding's American original, The Lion of the West. (Online Etmology Dictionary)

1820-30; pseudo-Latinism, from ab-, squat, and -ulate, paralleling Latin-derived words with initial abs- (e.g., abscond, abstention ) and final -tulate (Dictionary.com)