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addict
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... use of words such as recollect, aggravate, and oblige.
I don't know what to do first: bristle up at being called old-fashioned, rustic, and slow (for the record, I do not live in Appalachia), or ask in genuine astonishment: "Do you mean to tell me these three words aren't common all over the U.S.?" 'Cause they sure are alive and kickin', here.
Well, Jackie, I'd be happy to oblige you. As near as I can recollect, some folks do tend to aggravate you by telling you they don't use those words! I, myself, use them often, and I am not in Appalachia either!
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Pooh-Bah
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absquatulate is also a favourite of mine ever since, some years ago, I was asked by a crossword-addict if there was such a word. I LdIU in the OED at work and was given an etymology that derived the word from "abscond" cross-bred with "squattle."
The latter word, claimed the OED, was used in C19 USA to describe the action of Indians (Native Americans) when they upped tents and disappeared overnight, without any one being aware of their departure.
The main word, absquatulate, was said to be used mainly in respect of people who ran off with money which had been entrusted to them - e.g, the club's treasurer or the bank cashier.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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The main word, absquatulate, was said to be used mainly in respect of people who ran off with money which had been entrusted to them - e.g, the club's treasurer or the bank cashier.
Yes, Rhuby...my encounters with the word in the writings of the time seem to point to it being used more often in the sense of embezzlement or embezzler than anything else. Yet this particular word (embezzle) never seems to show up in any of absquatulate's definitions as a synonym.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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my recollection, having LIU when I used it for wwftd, was that OED didn't have much to say at all; I didn't get an impression of embezzlement:
[A factitious word, simulating a L. form (cf. abscond, gratulate) of American origin, and jocular use.]
To make off, decamp.
1837–40 Haliburton Clockmaker (1862) 363 Absquotilate it in style, you old skunk,+and show the gentlemen what you can do. 1858 Dow Serm. I. 309 in Bartlett Dict. Amer., Hope's brightest visions absquatulate. 1861 J. Lamont Seahorses xi. 179 He [an old bull-walrus] heard us, and lazily awaking, raised his head and prepared to absquatulate.
edit: on third thought, Juan, could you have been thinking of the word 'defalcate', which means 'to engage in embezzlement'?
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Carpal Tunnel
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I was curious to see what Mencken might have to say about absquatulate; he merely includes it in a discussion of some other curious words: Yet again, there are the purely artificial words, e.g., sockdolager, hunky-dory, scalawag, guyascutis, spondulix, slumgullion, rambunctious, scrumptious, to skedaddle, to absquatulate and to exfluncticate. 25 In the use of the last-named coinages fashions change. In the 40’s* to absquatulate was in good usage, but it has since disappeared. Most of the other inventions of the time, however, have to some extent survived, and it would be difficult to find an American of today whom did not know the meaning of scalawag and rambunctious and who did not occasionally use them.http://www.bartleby.com/185/pages/page96.html*1840s : ) pardon me whilst I look up guyascutis.... (errare est humanum)
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Carpal Tunnel
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pardon me whilst I look up guyascutis....Well, I reckon you found it right quick, eh tsuwm?  Amazing. But that's what makes you the biggest toad in the puddle. Can I absquatulate with some of that there magic of your'n? 
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Carpal Tunnel
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>I reckon you found it right quick..
actually®, it took a bit longer than usual -- Mencken spelled it... in a different way.
(hoooah!)
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Do you mean to tell me these three words aren't common all over the U.S.?"
Aggravate is in common use in Michigan, and I occasionally hear oblige, but I don't hear recollect used except as a humorous affectation.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Mencken spelled guyascutis hoooah???
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