| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| scoot |
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| PRONUNCIATION: |  sk t |
| VERB: | Inflected forms: scoot·ed, scoot·ing, scoots
| | INTRANSITIVE VERB: | To go suddenly and speedily; hurry. | | TRANSITIVE VERB: | Upper Southern U.S. To squirt with water: “I know I wouldn't scoot down no hog with no hose” (Flannery O'Connor). | | PHRASAL VERB: | scoot over To move or slide to the side: Scoot that chair over. | | ETYMOLOGY: | Scots, to eject, squirt, probably of Scandinavian origin; akin to Old Norse skj ta, to shoot. | | OTHER FORMS: | scoot —NOUN
| | REGIONAL NOTE: | Scoot comes from a Scandinavian verb related to the verb shoot and, borrowed into Scots dialect, originally meant “to squirt with water.” Two derived senses, both intransitive verbs, have become even more common: “to slide suddenly across a surface” and “to move quickly”: The mouse scooted across the floor. In the American Midlands, there is a phrasal verb scoot over, meaning, in its transitive sense, “to push (someone or something) to the side to make room.”
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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