| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
| |
| hornswoggle |
| |
| SYLLABICATION: | horn·swog·gle |
| PRONUNCIATION: |  hôrn sw g  l |
| TRANSITIVE VERB: | Inflected forms: horn·swog·gled, horn·swog·gling, horn·swog·gles
Chiefly Northern & Western U.S. To bamboozle; deceive. | | ETYMOLOGY: | Origin unknown. | | OUR LIVING LANGUAGE: | We do not know the origin of hornswoggle. We do know that it belongs to a group of “fancified” words that were particularly popular in the American West in the 19th century. Hornswoggle is one of the earliest, first appearing around 1829. It is possible that these words were invented to poke fun at the more “sophisticated” East. Some other words of this ilk are absquatulate, also first appearing in the 1820s, skedaddle, first attested in 1861 in Missouri, and discombobulate, first recorded in 1916.
| | |
| |
| 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. |
|
|
