where does the term "got away scott free" come from?
144020
Another variation: A scot is a payment or a charge, also an assessment or tax. To get off "scot free" means you get off without paying anything; no assessment, fine or tax. Check "scot" in any good dictionary.\n\nDr. Shelia M. Kennison wrote: I was under the impression that the phrase "getting off scott free" originated with the "Dredd Scott vs. Illinois" court case in the mid 1800s. Dredd Scott was a slave of a Missouri man who moved to Illinois, a free state at the time. Dredd Scott sued for his freedom. However, the court ruled against him. So there's a bit of irony in the meaning of the phrase, as Dredd Scott didn't become free.\n\nAnother comment: Refers to exemption from taxes (Scots) - probably medieval and originally referring to taxes to fund English wars against the Scots.\n\nSteve asks: My family are all Scots and this is a question I have wondered about for years! I assume it has something to do with the "frugalness" (aw heck cheapskate!) characterization of Scottish folks.\n\n\nLouie Buren <><
902882
Yes, and I think the reason why the song is so popular is because it is a situation most of us can relate to.  I think everybody has a person in their life that "got away".  For me, it was my highschool and college boyfriend Doug with the forest green eyes and crooked smile.  I can close my eyes and remember riding in that bright Orange Dodge demon of his.  I remember stolen, forbidden kisses when my parents prohibited me from seeing him.  Although I am in love with my hubby now, there will always be a place in my heart for Doug.
1000497
i dont know the origin, but i am kind of old and i have heard it since i was young.  it was a line in a country song several years ago, i cant remember song or artist though.\n\nit means that you admire someone very much, usually but not always, in a lovers type of way. \n\nshe thinks that he put the moon in to the sky (he hung the moon).\n\n\n\ni live in the southeast.
868294
I think it was coined by Martin Lawrence, the same man who gave us "You go, Girl!"\n\nCave\n\np.s.---Just found this:\n\n"In the case of "don't go there," the earliest citation for the phrase in print in the Oxford English Dictionary comes from an interview with comedian Martin Lawrence in Entertainment Weekly back in February 1994. At the time the star of the highly-rated Fox sitcom "Martin," Lawrence took the opportunity to complain, oddly enough, that his material was being stolen by other Fox shows: \n\n"Something ain't right," Lawrence says, removing his sunglasses. ... "We started using the expressions 'You go, girl!' and 'Don't go there!' and no one in television was doing that. No one. Now a lot of Fox shows are using the same stuff and the same premises."
71415
I can confirm that in the US, "worked off" is the preferred term, because the backlog can be removed, or taken -off- a production schedule (that's SKe-jool here, or SHe-jool in the UK ;) ).
242043
Also feminine form of Charles. (Old German) "free man." A modern-day shorter version of the forms Carleen and Carlene, which were a product of the 1960s. Singer Carly Simon.
44504
there are two supposed origins - \n1. is from the word nut, meaning hard seed, which is called "hnutu" in Old English or "*khnut" in Proto-Germanic\n\n2. from earlier be nutts upon "be very fond of" (1785), which is possibly from nuts (noun, plural) "any source of pleasure" (1617), from nut (described above). Sense influenced probably by metaphoric application of nut to "head" (1846, e.g. to be off one's nut "be insane," 1860). Nut "crazy person, crank" is attested from 1903, (British form nutter first attested 1958).
36331
I always heard it as "the Joker got away"...
77225
[A] At least two. However, the more one investigates, the further away a simple answer seems to get.\nThe phrase Katy bar the door! (also as Katy bar the gate!; sometimes written as Katie) is a very American exclamation, more common in the South than elsewhere, meaning that disaster impends—“watch out”, “get ready for trouble” or “a desperate situation is at hand”.\nWhere it comes from is uncertain. Jonathan Lighter, in the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, finds a first example from 1902. I’ve done slightly better than that, having found the phrase in a poem called “When Lide Married Him” by James Whitcomb Riley, which was published in a collection called Armazindy in 1894. A young lady marries a known drunkard against family advice and forcibly reforms him. One stanza ends with the line: “When Lide married him, it wuz ‘Katy, bar the door!’ ”, suggesting trouble ensued.\nIt seems clear, though, that this isn’t where the phrase came from. The one useful comment I can find in print is in William and Mary Morris’s book The Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, based on a comment from Nancy Britt of Arkansas. She suggested it came from a traditional ballad. The one she is presumably referring to is medieval Scots, usually entitled Get Up and Bar the Door, which is still widely known and sung. But no version I’ve found mentions Katy anywhere.\nThe wife wants her husband to bar the door because the wind blows in and disturbs her at her cooking. The husband doesn’t want to be bothered to get up and do it. They agree after an argument that the first person who speaks will be the loser and will have to bar the door. Neither speaks, and neither bars the door. At night, robbers enter through the open door and eat the food the wife has prepared. Neither husband nor wife says anything because of their agreement and their stubborn refusal to be the first to give way. However, when the robbers propose to cut off the husband’s beard and kiss the wife (I assume these are euphemisms), the husband rises up in a rage and shouts at the thieves, at which the wife rejoices:\nThen up and started our goodwife,\nGied three skips on the floor:\n“Goodman, you've spoken the foremost word,\nGet up and bar the door.” Though the ballad is actually a wry look at marital obstinacy and its consequences, the most direct lesson is that not barring the door has led them to trouble. Barring the door with the intruders inside wasn’t such a smart move, either. So it is possible that the injunction, “bar the door!”, was adapted from it to suggest there is unpleasantness ahead.\nHowever, many subscribers have pointed to a quite different story, also from Scotland, involving one Catherine Douglas. King James I of Scotland, a cultured and firm ruler, was seen by some of his countrymen as a tyrant. Under attack by his enemies while staying at the Dominican chapter house in Perth on 20 February 1437, he was holed up in a room whose door had the usual metal staples for a wooden bar, but whose bar had been taken away. The legend has it that Catherine Douglas, one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting, tried heroically to save James I by barring the door with her naked arm. Her attempt failed, her arm being broken in the process, and the King was murdered, but she was thereafter known as Catherine Barlass.\nDante Gabriel Rossetti wrote a poem about her in 1881, entitled The King’s Tragedy, of which one stanza is:\nLike iron felt my arm, as through\nThe staple I made it pass:—\nAlack! it was flesh and bone—no more!\n’Twas Catherine Douglas sprang to the door,\nBut I fell back Kate Barlass. This is as circumstantial a basis for the expression Katie bar the door as the one above, but it is much stronger in its romantic associations and therefore rather more probable a source.\nHowever, the nearest that Rossetti comes to the conventional expression in the poem is “Catherine, keep the door!”. In its
308790
Came from General George Patton during WWII.  It stands for \n"Situation Normal All Fouled Up"  One may substitute a different word starting with "F" should one be so inclined. The original I believe used by General Patton was the substitute word beginning with "F".
83950
"Let he (or she) goes!"\nIt's a expression that means: let the person be free to go away, if this is his (or her) decision.
608021
I don't know the answer, but I know it was not Dredd Scott. He was not a fugitive slave, he had been freed and had sued for back wages because his former master had brought him into a free territory and then took him back to a slave state.
457033
Speculation about its origin is found in Eric Partridge's "Dictionary of Catch Phrases":\n\n"'Come up and see my etchings' was, perhaps, orig. a US students' catchphrase that rapidly gained a much wider currency: throughout the US, thence in Can. and UK and, prob. indicative of US influence in 1943-5, Aus. Formerly I suspected that it was prompted by [Mae West's] 'come up and see me sometime!'; yet it could well have been the other way about. In his letter . . . Prof. S. H. Monk writes: "I am certain that I knew this sentence by the midtwenties. Actually I knew no one who had a collection of etchings or who was suave enough to seduce a young thing in this manner. But the phrase certainly floated in and out of cartoons and jokes. To me, it has an 1890-ish or Edwardian tone, and I suspect that it existed in 'sophisticated' urban society before it ever reached me. I think that this can still sometimes be heard, but it is definitely 'corny'."\nPerhaps confirmatory of Prof. Monk's shrewd remarks is the fact that in Susannah Centlivre's comedy, 'The Man's Bewitched' (1710), Act III, where Belinda, Maria, Constant and Lovely are in the study, and Lovely exclaims, 'Interrogating! Nay, then 'tis proper to be alone; there is a very pretty Collection of Prints in the next Room, Madam, will you give me leave to explain them to you?' Maria answers, 'Any Thing that may divert your Love--Subject.'\nIt should, however, be noted that this catchphrase perhaps derives from Surreyside melodrama--the villain enticing the innocent maiden."
81047
My dad always referenced it as "come see, come saw". Kind of an early version of "been there, done that".
687186
hmmmmm, deep question. i always thought it was a "get-away "(from reality) drug!
1075656
Interesting question. I found this answer that seemed to offer the most succinct explanation:\n\nAs with the word hopscotch, scot free has no connection with Scotsmen, frugal or otherwise. It’s a Scandinavian word meaning “payment”. The expression derives from a medieval municipal tax levied in proportional shares on inhabitants, often for poor relief. This was called a scot, as an abbreviation of the full term scot and lot, where scot was the sum to be paid and lot was one’s allotted share. (This tax lasted a long time, in some places such as Westminster down to the electoral reforms of 1832, with only those paying scot and lot being allowed to vote.) So somebody who avoided paying his share of the town’s expenses for some reason got off scot free. It was also used for a payment or reckoning, especially one’s share of the cost of an entertainment; when one settled up, one “paid for one’s scot”. Again, someone who evaded paying their share of the tab got off scot free. It’s been suggested that this usage may have come from the old habit of noting purchases of drinks and the like by making marks on a slate, or scotching it, but the evidence suggests this is just a popular etymology, and that the usage comes from the same idea of a sum due to be paid.
1156734
Meaning\n\nA rogue or scamp - "you are naughty, you old son of a gun". \n\n\nThe phrase originated as 'son of a military man' (i.e. a gun). The most commonly repeated version in this strand is that the British Navy used to allow women to live on naval ships. Any child born on board who had uncertain paternity would be listed in the ship's log as 'son of a gun'. While it is attestable fact that, although the Royal navy had rules against it, they did turn a blind eye to women (wives or prostitutes) joining sailors on voyages, so this version has plausibility on its side.