skimble-skamble / holus-bolus
Sep. 21st, 2009 07:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordA week of doubles -- and to start things off, each of the double is reduplicative.
skimble-skamble - adj., rambling, confused, nonsensical.
holus-bolus - adj., all at once.
The first is reduplicative of the dialect word scamble, to stumble, first recorded in 1596 but like most slang probably predates that. The second is not so much reduplicative as mock Latin variation of "whole bolus," where bolus is a larger than ordinary pill, from Latin again since the 1590s, ultimately from Greek bôlos, lump; the mock duplicative form first appears in the 1840s or '50s, and I assume was schoolboy slang for some time before that.
---L.
skimble-skamble - adj., rambling, confused, nonsensical.
holus-bolus - adj., all at once.
The first is reduplicative of the dialect word scamble, to stumble, first recorded in 1596 but like most slang probably predates that. The second is not so much reduplicative as mock Latin variation of "whole bolus," where bolus is a larger than ordinary pill, from Latin again since the 1590s, ultimately from Greek bôlos, lump; the mock duplicative form first appears in the 1840s or '50s, and I assume was schoolboy slang for some time before that.
---L.
