FLOYD (mid 50s-early 60s) - A breakfast patron of Sea Hags. CORAL (late 40s/early 50s) - A flat broke, snowbound, middle-age former mermaid and co-owner of Sea Hags, a ramshackle bed and breakfast at the New Jersey seashore.And, like Coral, Oceana and Marina, you may find that "happily ever after" is closer than you think! But love being what is is, gives Pearl some ideas of her own.įoolish Fishgirls and The Pearl is a feisty fairytale about a mermaid's life on dry land after true love is found, lost and found again. Helped by their cousin Marina who was unceremoniously dumped by the Captain when her treasure finally ran out, the trio of middle age former sea goddesses try to convince the young mermaid, Pearl, to hightail it back to the sea. When Coral and Oceana learn of a mermaid rescue involving a young Coast Guard Lieutenant whose car went off a nearby bridge, they dive into action to find the young, innocent mermaid and warn her about the perils and pitfalls of falling in love with mortal men who abscond with your gems, leaving you penniless with a broken heart and two skinny legs. ![]() Talk about unhappy endings!Ĭoral's sailor, Fernandi, took off with her treasure and returned home to his wife and four kids in Venezuela! Oceana's dreambot, Hans, hit the road with her treasure to live happily ever after with his boyfriend, Juergen, in Norway! It comes, rather, from “boogie,” US slang from the early 20th century originally meaning a style of blues music and later adopted in a more general form to mean “to dance energetically.” An even broader use of “boogie” to mean “move quickly” or “get going” appeared in the 1970s, and “to book,” meaning “to leave to move quickly and purposefully,” appears to be simply a modified form of “boogie” used in that sense.Former deep sea divas, Coral and Oceana, didn't exactly have the "happily ever after" storybook lives that the two erstwhile mermaids dreamed of when they rescued their handsome young sailors and swam ashore thirty years ago. “Book,” meaning “to leave,” apparently has nothing to do with the usual senses of “book” as a noun or verb (as in “Book ’em, Danno”). Many animals, including deer and horses, raise their tails when they flee, making the action a good metaphor for a panicked retreat. The best guess I’ve seen is that “skedaddle,” which first appeared as military slang meaning “to flee” during the American Civil War, is related in some way to the Irish word “sgedadol,” meaning “scattered.” “Skedaddle” is a much shorter story, simply because nothing is known of its origins. “Bolt” as a verb meaning “leave suddenly and quickly” also harks back to this original “arrow” meaning, the sense being that the person leaves as if shot like an arrow. The use of “bolt” to mean “arrow” also led to it meaning “stout pin used to hold things together” and even “a roll of fabric” (from its shape). By the early 16th century, we were also using “bolt” to mean a discharge of lightning (“thunderbolt”) and, shortly thereafter, as a metaphor for something dramatic and unanticipated (“bolt from the blue”). When “bolt” first appeared in Old English, derived from Germanic roots, it meant “projectile,” particularly the sort of short arrow fired from a crossbow. As you’ve noticed, the lexicon of leaving is a rich and varied one, a tribute to the usual wisdom of choosing “flight” over “fight.” The verb “to bolt,” meaning “to dart or rush suddenly away” is one of the oldest on your list, but to explain the verb “to bolt” we must first explain the noun form. More often the question runs something like “Where did ‘cat o’ nine tails’ come from? Is the Mississippi named for somebody? And, by the way, is ‘snuck’ a real word?” At least the words are related in meaning. Leaving so soon? I must say that yours is one of the better jobs I’ve seen of shoehorning multiple questions into one email. ![]() ![]() I conjecture that “bolt” comes from a bolt of lightning, and “skedaddle” sounds like it means, but why have “book” and “hightail” come to mean “leave quickly?” - Michael Duggan. ![]() Dear Word Detective: When needing a quick exit, I might bolt for freedom, hightail it out of there, skedaddle, or just book it out of there.
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