The Misanthropic Frat Boy has a list over on the Nihilist in Golf Pants blog (and really, with names like those how can you resist reading?) describing the Top 11 Democratic Strategies for Winning the War in Iraq. The list includes “skedaddle”, “bug out” and “skonker off”.

Of course, I can’t let an opportunity pass to quote some Monty Python doggerol, i.e. the Brave Sir Robin flight ditty. (You’ll recall that Brave Sir Robin was anything but, and used the MSM – Mainstream Minstrels – to try and convince people otherwise).

Brave Sir Robin ran away.
Bravely ran away, away!
When danger reared its ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled.
Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about
And gallantly he chickened out.
Bravely taking to his feet
He beat a very brave retreat,
Bravest of the brave, Sir Robin!

A great word, or strategy, that the Misanthropic Frat Boy missed is “Absquatulate”, as defined in the American Heritage Dictionary:

SYLLABICATION: ab·squat·u·late
PRONUNCIATION: b-skwch-lt
INTRANSITIVE VERB: Inflected forms: ab·squat·u·lat·ed, ab·squat·u·lat·ing, ab·squat·u·lates
Midwestern & Western U.S. 1a. To depart in a hurry; abscond: “Your horse has absquatulated!” (Robert M. Bird). b. To die. 2. To argue.
ETYMOLOGY: Mock-Latinate formation, purporting to mean “to go off and squat elsewhere”.

Personally, however, I’ve always like the definition offered in Norman Schur’s book, “1000 Most Difficult Words” (Random House):

Absquatulate
(ab SKWAH chuh late) vb.

This amusing, vivid, and expressive word is a bit of jocular, contrived, slang. To absquatulate is to decamp, to scram, to take off in a hell of a hurry like a fugitive heading into the woods; sometimes, to abscond, like a cashier running off with the contents of the till. The term, invented in America in the 1830s and adopted by the English in the 1870s is an example of supposed derivation from factitious mock-Latin, based on a combination of parts of abscond, squat, perambulate and heaven knows what else. A certain J. Lamont, in an old book entitled Seahorse, wrote of a grizzled bull-walrus who “heard us, and lazily awakening, raised his head and prepared to absquatulate.” You may not run across this little item nowadays, but it’s a picturesque word whose revitalization should be encouraged, though it may be used to describe a practice that should be discouraged.

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