People of a certain age (now mostly dead) will recall the
slang phrase 23 Skidoo! It means “to leave quickly,” usually in order to avoid some
unpleasant consequence.
First seen in print around 1906, it became a popular catch-phrase in the 1920s. Its etymological
origin is murky. Evidently it's a combination
of two earlier phrases, twenty-three
and skidoo, each of which independently
meant to “leave quickly” or possibly to “be kicked out of” an establishment.
One supposed explanation tries to associate 23 Skidoo with New York’s Flatiron
Building, which is on West 23rd Street beween 5th Avenue
and Broadway. Because of the building’s odd shape, high winds swept vigorously
around it. Lecherous men (are
there any other kind?) liked to gather there in the early 1900s and watch women’s
skirts being blown up, revealing lots of leg. Cops would shoo the men away from
23rd Street, giving them
a “23 Skidoo.”
Nice story, but probably not accurate.
The term twenty-three
by itself, meaning “scram,” appeared in print in 1899, but it can possibly be
traced all the way to Charles Dickens’ A
Tale of Two Cities, published in 1859. At the end of the novel Sidney Carton is No. 23 of a group
of some 50 to be guillotined. In the theatrical version, an old woman sits at
the foot of the guillotine, counting the heads as they roll. When Carton meets
his fate, she dispassionately says “twenty-three,” and the phrase became
popular among theatre folk, meaning “It’s time to exit.”
Another theory traces the term twenty-three to nineteenth-century English race tracks, where that
was the maximum number of horses allowed in a race, so that when No. 23 was in
the post, it was time for all the horses to leave and start the race.
Skidoo, which
appeared by itself around 1901, is generally regarded as a variant of skedaddle. Skedaddle comes
from the British dialectic scaddle,
meaning to “run off in fright,”
which in turn is derived from Old Norse skathi
(“harm”).
The Bard of Buffalo Bayou, who has had a long rest, has been
at his wit’s end (not a great distance) to come up with an appropriate verse. This tortured colloquy is the sad
result of his efforts.
Into
a bar there came two dozen squid.
Just
one does not remember what she did,
No,
she does not recall what she did do—
But
you know that twenty-three squid do!
