The word hornswoggle, meaning “to embarrass” or “to swindle,” is of unclear origin, but definitely seems of a piece with U.S. frontier slang from the 1830s and 1840s. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Etymology of Hornswoggle”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Good morning. I’m Juan Tomit, and I’m calling from Monta Vista, Colorado.
Hi, Wanda. You said Wanda?
Yes, that’s it.
Wanda, welcome to the show.
What’s happening, Wanda? What’s going on?
I would like to know where the word horn-schwaggled came from.
How do you schwaggle a horn, or what does that have to do with anything with horn-schwaggle?
Have you been swindled lately?
No swindled, no bamboozled, but horn-schwaggled, maybe.
You’ve been hornswoggled. Somebody pulled one over.
Congratulations.
Yeah, and by hornswoggled, we mean, as Grant suggested, to be tricked or swindled or embarrassed, something like that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That’s a word we don’t know the origin for.
It’s an American word, though, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It’s one of these words that seems of a piece with a lot of rambunctious frontier words, words that people came up with on the frontier back in the 1830s, 1840s.
So these long words they made up to sound important.
Yeah, it sounded like they came from Latin or something.
But probably to mimic the people who were self-important rather than actually put on real air.
And there are lots of different variations of it, like hornswoggle and hornscriggle and hornsnoggle and hornswaggle and hornswoggle.
It sort of sounds like what it is, right?
Oh, yeah.
You know, there are a lot of words like that, like honeyfuggle, which sort of means the same thing, or bumswiggle.
It’s just sort of a silly-sounding word, we think.
Bumswiggle?
Bumswiggle.
Sounds like the latest dance craze.
Yeah.
That’s not like twerking, is it?
I don’t know if it’s like twerking.
I don’t even know if it’s bumswiggle or bumswiggle.
But bumswiggle.
I’ll be bumswiggled.
I’ll be hornswoggled.
I’ll have to try to bum-swiggle one of these days.
All right.
So that’s about all we have on that.
Well, thank you very much.
Okay.
Thank you very much, Juan.
Take care now.
You bet.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
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