Word of the Day

: September 28, 2016

vamoose

verb vuh-MOOSS

What It Means

: to depart quickly

vamoose in Context

With the sheriff and his posse hot on their tails, the bank robbers knew they had better vamoose.

"Five minutes later the police arrived, and of course there was no sign of illegal activity. The crooks monitored the police radio and knew when to vamoose." — The Rockford (Illinois) Register Star, 14 July 2016

Did You Know?

In the 1820s and '30s, the American Southwest was rough-and-tumble territory—the true Wild West. English-speaking cowboys, Texas Rangers, and gold prospectors regularly rubbed elbows with Spanish-speaking vaqueros in the local saloons, and a certain amount of linguistic intermixing was inevitable. One Spanish term that caught on with English speakers was vamos, which means "let's go." Cowpokes and dudes alike adopted the word, at first using a range of spellings and pronunciations that varied considerably in their proximity to the original Spanish form. But when the dust settled, the version most American English speakers were using was vamoose.