23 Skidoo!

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 23^rd Street beween 5^th 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 23^rd 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!