skedaddle
Americanverb (used without object)
noun
verb
noun
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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skedaddlesimple
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skedaddlessimple
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have skedaddledperfect
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has skedaddledperfect
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am skedaddlingprogressive
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are skedaddlingprogressive
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is skedaddlingprogressive
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have been skedaddlingperfect progressive
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has been skedaddlingperfect progressive
Past
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skedaddledsimple
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had skedaddledperfect
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was skedaddlingprogressive
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were skedaddlingprogressive
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had been skedaddlingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of skedaddle
1860–65, compare dial. ( Scots, N England) skedaddle to spill, scatter, skiddle to move away quickly
Explanation
When you skedaddle, you leave very suddenly. A kid who breaks a window with her baseball might decide to skedaddle before her neighbor comes home from work. You might decide to skedaddle from your aunt's party before she starts showing the slides from her vacation ten years ago, or skedaddle from the town swimming pool when it starts to rain. In either case, you're getting out of there, and fast. Skedaddle is American Civil War military slang, dating from about 1861 — experts aren't sure what its roots are.
Vocabulary lists containing skedaddle
Ben Zimmer's 30 Great American Words
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The Red Umbrella
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"Pitch Perfect," Vocabulary from the movie
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
But even the vague threat of personal conflict and humiliation was enough to make him skedaddle down to Mar-a-Lago when it was time to go.
From Salon ● Aug. 16, 2023
Ernest Hemingway’s advice for novelists dealing with Hollywood was to stop on the east bank of the Colorado River, hold your nose, toss your screenplay over the state line, take the money and skedaddle.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 4, 2022
In such a situation, taking all this in, a sane character would run, flee, skedaddle, vamoose, make tracks and call in the cops, or maybe an airstrike.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 28, 2021
My preference would have been to skedaddle behind a tree.
From New York Times ● Jul. 24, 2020
He told us it was time to do the skedaddle.
From "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls
At barely an hour, it skedaddles in time to leave you with a sheepish smile.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 19, 2026
And then he skedaddles before the bill comes.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 28, 2018
How long till Kelly skedaddles back to college, as Spurrier did?
From New York Times ● Sep. 29, 2015
Sterling skedaddles through the heart of the Slovenia defence and into the area.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 14, 2015
The retreats were called "skedaddles," a term invented at the time by some wag.
From The Strange Story of Harper's Ferry With Legends of the Surrounding Country by Barry, Joseph
What if instead of staying in the tomb, she skedaddled with a posy to the Renaissance club scene in Paris and found a new love?
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 11, 2023
Usually the sheep walked away or skedaddled before any physical altercation actually broke out.
From Scientific American ● Oct. 17, 2022
One of the few positives is most investors seem to have skedaddled already.
From Reuters ● Feb. 11, 2022
SHEBOYGAN, Wis. — When suspense long since has skedaddled off to some other place and a sporting event has morphed into more of a parade, people do still come for the parade.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 26, 2021
I hugged Dismay first—he was so alive and full of good feelings—and I skedaddled for the house.
From Each Little Bird That Sings by Deborah Wiles
Shame on you for skedaddling anonymously and cowardly away.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 3, 2023
Johnson said she’s taken the middle seat on flights to make up for skedaddling on her fiancé—one of many favors Precheckers told me they perform to mitigate some of the inequities.
From Slate ● Jan. 4, 2020
The team stunk, top to bottom and James had to escape the torment, skedaddling to Miami.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 12, 2018
I could see other critics, either through ignorance, deviousness or entitlement, cruising right around the line that everyone was supposed to stand in and skedaddling up the escalator to the theater.
From Salon ● Dec. 16, 2015
It proved to be an alarm caused by a party of guerrillas making a dash upon our foraging train, capturing some seventy mules, then skedaddling before the escort could come up.
From An Artilleryman's Diary by Jones, Jenkins Lloyd
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
