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I heard a word this weekend that I'd never heard before. Just checking here to see if any of you have ever heard of it.
cattywampus
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Joined: Dec 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Yew betcha I've heard it. Everthang's gone all cattywampus!
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Carpal Tunnel
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I've heard of cattywampus, but I'm not sure I would have gotten the definition correct on a multiple-choice test.
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and i have not. my dictionary translates cattywampus as cattywampus. i would gladly know what that means.
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Joined: Dec 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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I would have to say that cattywampus means awry, higgledy-piggledy, every-which-way.
You could say, for example, that the books were laid out on the table all cattywampus meaning that they weren't piled up neatly but were scattered about, possibly leaning against each other, in disarray.
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Joined: Dec 2002
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cattywampus = alles durcheinander
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Carpal Tunnel
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From the Internet:
Posted by Bruce Kahl on February 29, 2000 at 03:03:31:
In Reply to: Re: Cattywumpus posted by Bob DeLong on February 28, 2000 at 20:46:42:
The first element of the word, "cata," is probably related to "cater," also found in the related word
"catercorner" (or, as many folks know it, "cattycorner" or "kittycorner"). "Cater" in these words is an
Anglicization of the French "quatre," or "four," and "catercornered" originally just meant "four-cornered."
To specify that something is "catercorner across" from something else is to stress the diagonal axis of an
imaginary box, as opposed to saying "directly across" or just "across." Both "catercorner" and
"catawampus" are native American colloquialisms dating back to the 1880's or earlier.
The "wampus" part of "catawampus" is a real puzzler. It may have come from the Scots word "wampish,"
meaning "to wriggle or twist," which would certainly seem to fit with "catawampus" meaning "askew" or
"crooked." But "wampus" also may have been a completely nonsensical element, made up by someone
because it sounded funny..
Two other aspects of "catawampus" bear mentioning. First, "catawampus" can also mean "a fierce
imaginary animal," or simply "fierce." The theory is that this sense of "catawampus" is entirely separate
in origin from the "askew" sense, and comes from "catamount," which is an old American folk term for a
mountain lion (cat-a-mount, get it?).
Second, both "catawampus" and "catercorner" are often seen and heard with the first element spelled
"catty" or "kitty." Linguists call this process "folk etymology" -- people replacing an unfamiliar element in
a word or phrase ("cater") with a familiar one ("catty" or "kitty").
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Carpal Tunnel
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Well it just so happens I have sitting here in my list of planned revivalist postings from McCutcheon's "Slang and Everyday Speech" section of his A Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in the 1800s this little gem: > catawamptiously chawed up: utterly defeated, badly beaten. An expression largely confined to the South and West, from at least the 1840s on.< So there must be a relation here. and it sounds like aa apt decriptive to milum's and sjm's Hogwash® experience...catawaptiously chawed up!  'Salright, Connie...I'm not the least kerfuffled that you absquatulated with one of my most looked-forward-to posts...'cause you're some pumpkins!  But don't do that no more...'cause, then, someday, somehow, when you least expect it, you just might find yourself catawamptiously chawed up!
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old hand
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old hand
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>cattywampus = alles durcheinander
Now that's a neat phrase, the sort of mellifluous gem that generated my adolescent infatuation with Allemanic. Alles durcheinander is just such a wonderfully apt way to describe my enivirons (at their most orderly, anyway)
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