Hi all,

new to the board, and I have a word origin question that's been bugging me for some time. What is the original / historical meaning of the expression "all get out"?

there are several phrases based on the phrasal verb 'to get out (of)'; e.g., as or like (all) get-out, used to indicate a high degree of something

1838 J. C. Neal Charcoal Sketches 12 We look as elegant and as beautiful as get out.

Mark Twain may have been among the first to add 'all'..

1884 ‘M. Twain’ Adventures Huckleberry Finn xxxviii. 325 We got to dig in like all git-out.
[OED]

Some folk here in the highlands of Mississippi (of which there are none) understand "get out" to be the diminutive of "all get out". As in:
"Get out an extra clean plate; Aunt Gussie's* coming over for supper" or
"Get out the cloth tablecloth, the un-chipped China, the matching silverware, and put on your manners; Reverend Jackson's coming for dinner".

And maybe "all get out" trans-mutilated into "get up" as in overdone attire such as a phony cowboy's outfit, but not "git-ty up" which likey means "get up and go, horse".

*My sweet Aunt Gussie always wore too much make-up. She was always "gussied up".

trans-mutilated

Thanks Jackie for your laugh. We southern folks are blessed with a redeeming sense of self-depreciating humor.

usage note:

Of the two combinations self-depreciatory and self-deprecatory the former is, strictly speaking, the better-formed, since it reflects the long-established use of the verb depreciate in the sense ‘disparage, belittle’. The latter combination, however, which reflects the relatively recent use of deprecate in this sense, appears from the evidence to be now somewhat the commoner of the two. [OED online]

self-deprecating - 2.24 million gh
self-depreciating - 856,000 gh

And currently little used.