Folk phrases for *escape*

Posted by ESC on August 28, 2002

In Reply to: Folk phrases for *escape* posted by ESC on August 27, 2002

: : I wonder if anyone here knows some good folk phrases for escape from authority (be it a boy from his parents, a kid from the techers, a youth from the cops..... whatever). Eluding suppression and repression.

: : The act of escaping.

: : And, too, the condition of having escaped.

: : Thanks t'ya. Parnell

: I have several country phrase books. But none have indexes so I have to page through.

: hell and gone (n. phr. the remotest distance) ".and lit out for hell an' gone.' 'It's me for the high hills of hell an' gone)." "Smoky Mountain Voices: A Lexicon of Southern Appalachian Speech Based on the Research of Horace Kephart," edited by Harold J. Farwell Jr., and J. Karl Nicholas (University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, Ky., 1993).

: A hard dog to keep under the porch.

: Running fast: He was splittin' the mud. He took off like a scalded dog.

To run: Buck it. High-tail it. Run like wild turkeys. To outwit: outsharp. From Southern Mountain Speech by Cratis D. Williams (Berea College Press, 1992)

You can't keep a squirrel on the ground - It's futile to force someone to do something he's not naturally suited to do. From the Mountain Range section of the Facts on File Dictionary of American Regionalisms: Local Expressions from Coast to Coast by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York, 2000).