A nine-year-old from Yuma, Arizona, wants to know the origin of catawampus. So do etymologists. Catawampus means “askew,” “awry,” or “crooked.” We do know the word has been around for more than a century and is spelled many different ways, such as cattywampus and caddywampus. It may derive from the Scots word wampish, meaning to “wriggle,” “twist,” or “swerve.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Etymology of Catawampus”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, my name is Noah Grace, and my mom always says the word cattywampus, and I wanted to know where it comes from.
That’s a really good question, Noah Grace. Where are you? Where are you calling from?
I live in Yuma, Arizona, and right now I’m at school.
Oh, very nice. Very good. And Noah Grace, how does your mother use it? Can you use it in a sentence for us?
She usually uses it to describe things that are, like, messed up.
Okay, messed up. Like, your room is all catawampus?
Yeah.
And you want to know why she uses this word or where it comes from?
Yeah.
Yeah, it’s a funny word, isn’t it?
Yes, it is.
Does it seem a little nicer than just saying, Noah Grace, your room is a mess? But if she says, Noah Grace, your room is all catawampus, does that sound just a little nicer?
Yes, it does.
Yeah, I would think so, too. And do you have any guesses what it might come from?
I’m not very sure.
Okay. Well, you know what? Neither are we. We have some ideas, though. We do know that it’s at least 100 years old, and we also know that people spell it like, I don’t know, 20 or 30 different ways.
How?
It’s possible that it comes from some dialect words. That means a form of language spoken in another place or another region from the United Kingdom and the British Isles, where the people who originally settled in this country brought that word in a couple of different forms to this country, and then we kept on using it.
So cater, the first part of it, other people say catty, or they have other spellings and pronunciations. It’s C-A-T-E-R in the oldest form, means diagonal. And the wampus part can mean wriggly or swirly or looping or something like that. And so we think that it means a diagonal kind of diagonal swirly mess, something like that.
Oh. You know, like when a picture on the wall isn’t quite straight and you have to go straighten it up?
Mm—
You would say that that’s catawampus.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, so it means not straight or not right or not correct, not like it’s supposed to be.
Cool.
Yeah, right? It’s pretty cool.
Mm—
Do you think you might have this word on a spelling test anytime soon?
Probably.
Oh, really? We’re going to give you the best spelling that we know, all right? Here it is. C-A-T-T-Y, like catty, wampus, W-A-M-P-U-S, cattywampus.
That’s how my mom says it.
There we go. That’s good. Excellent.
All right. Well, Noah Grace, I want to thank you for calling us today, and good luck with your schoolwork, all right?
Thank you.
All right. Bye-bye. Take care. Bye-bye. Goodbye.
Nerd in training.
Yay. That was a good question too, right?
It’s an excellent question. It’s puzzled all of us, right? When you look at, she’s right on the target. Like all of these spellings all over the place. And some of them are very far from cattywampus. And yet we know there’s a connection.
Yeah. And it throws a cater corner is related to cattywampus.
Possibly. Catty corner. Yeah. Diagonal.
Well, if you’re wondering about a word, do what Noah Grace did. Call us 877-929-9673. You can also send an email. The address is words@waywordradio.org, and you can find us on Facebook and Twitter.
