By any other name

Posted by Word Camel on March 19, 2003

In Reply to: SCUD posted by ESC on March 19, 2003

: : : We had a discussion a while back of the derivation / history of the word SCUD with no solid clues at all as to the derivation except that Bob found it was probably a NATO thing and another theory on it being a Russian cloud.
: : : Anybody out there have anything to add?

: : I checked in a couple of my books acquired post-discussion and couldn't find anything new.

: I googled the question and (ta da!) found (in addition to the original discussion - www.phrases.org.uk bulletin_board 3 messages 550.html ) a follow-up by Mr. Briggs posted on this site.

They are so pathetically inaccurate British Intelligence refers to them as the "flying dust bins" or perhaps today they might be known as the "flying dustbins of mass destruction"