Page:Farmer - Slang and its analogues past and present - Volume 1.pdf/65

 himself, or 'cuts his stick' with celerity as occasion requires. Both the English and French have many synonymous words and phrases to express the same idea. Among the more popular may be mentioned:--

English Synonyms. To skedaddle (an American term); to cut one's lucky; to sling, or take one's hook; to mizzle; to absquatulate; to pad the hoof; to give leg bail; to bolt; to cut and run; to chivey; to walk the trotters; to slip one's cable; to step it; to leg it; to tip the double; to make, or take tracks; to hook it; to make beef (thieves' term); to slope; to cut the cable and run before the wind (obviously a sailor's phrase); to slip it; to abskize; to paddle; to guy (used by thieves); to evaporate; to vamoose (American, from the Spanish imperative vamos, let us go); to speele (used by thieves); to skip; to tip one's rags a gallop; to walk one's chalks; to pike; to hop the twig; to turn it up; to cap one's lucky (a phrase mainly confined to American thieves); to crush; to cut dirt; to bunk; to pike it; to stir one's stumps.

French. Faire or jouer la fille de l'air (lit. 'to go like the wind,' fille de l'air, daughter of air, being a poetical embodiment); faire le lézard (a thief's term, and meaning properly 'to imitate a lizard,' an allusion to swiftness of motion); faire le jat-jat; faire la paire (lit. 'to go double,' Cf., 'to tip the double'); faire gille (a very old French phrase; it means also to become bankrupt. The connection between bankruptcy and decamping is obvious); se déguiser en cerf (popular: lit. 'to play the stag'); s'évanouir (popular: lit. 'to vanish' or 'fade away'); se cramper or tirer sa crampe (cramper is a popular term for rapid flight, and contains an allusion to the cramp or nervous contraction sometimes caused by violent motion. Old French had the verb crampir in the sense of 'to bend' or 'double up.' Tirer sa crampe is lit. 'to get cramped'); se lâcher du ballon (popular: 'to let loose the balloon,' an allusion to the rapidity with which a balloon shoots up into the air when set free); se la couler (exactly equivalent to the English slang 'to slip it'); se donner de l'air (popular: Cf., faire la fille de l'air); se pousser du zeph (popular: properly 'to push forward with the wind.' Zeph is a contraction of zephir); se sylphider (popular: from sylphide, a sylph; a reference to what in English racing terminology would be termed the 'light-weight' character of such creatures enabling them to get over the ground quickly); se faire la débinette; jouer des fourchettes (popular: 'to put one's forks into play'); fourchettes (in French argot = legs or 'pins'); se la donner (Michel says la here refers to 'la clef des champs,' an expression synonymous with 'liberty' or 'freedom'); se la briser (popular); ramasser un bidon (thieves'); se la casser (popular); se la tirer; tirer ses granches; valser (lit. to dance); se tirer les pincettes (popular: lit. 'to pull along' or to extricate 'one's tongs' or 'nippers.' Cf., English 'nip along'); se tirer les baladoires; se tirer les pattes (lit. 'to move one's paws'); se tirer les trimoires (thieves': trimoires is a cant term for legs,