Transcript of “Go for a Scud”
Welcome to A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Hannah. I’m calling from Menominee, Michigan.
So my dad has used this phrase for as long as I can remember, and I’ve never heard anyone else use it.
When he would go for a drive, that’s what we would do up here in the rural Northwoods when there was nothing else to do, go for a drive and look at stuff.
He’d say, do you want to go for a scud?
And that’s he’s always said it. I’m 31 years old and that’s just something I’ve always heard and never heard anyone else say it.
So I wanted to explore that. All right. Yeah, this is the place for that.
Let me ask Hannah, have you asked him about it? What did he say?
Yeah, I’ve asked him about it and he said it started as an inside joke between himself and his friends when he was just out of high school.
He had a 1976 Mercury Montego MX.
And I guess the roundabout way that this came to be was there’s an MX missile that the U.S. had and then a Scud missile that Russia had.
Or maybe I’m mixing that up.
And he thought, well, it sounds better to say let’s go for a Scud than let’s go for an MX.
And so they just started saying that.
Interesting.
Well, there’s another notion here, and I wonder if his attempt to explain the story isn’t after the fact,
And if he doesn’t somehow remember that scud is a word, both a noun and a verb, related to something that is fast.
So the verb to scud means to move swiftly.
So people often talk in literature about clouds scudding across the sky.
Sure.
It’s a little archaic in other uses but it does exist and in the UK particularly in Scotland but
Also in Ireland and England you will still hear scud meaning to to speed or to hit and also to
Skim which is indirectly related and it’s got an old English root possibly goes back to sudan
S-c-u-d-a-n with that hard s-k that it got later possibly coming from similar words in old Norse
And other Germanic languages.
But yeah, it’s a real word.
Yeah, and I’ve heard of people saying,
Let’s go for a scud or let’s go scudding,
You know, down the Carolina coast, they say that.
Interesting, I love that.
Wasn’t just your dad.
Yeah, he would say it and I’d say,
What the heck are you talking about?
So do you still use it?
I guess that’s the big question.
Do you still use it?
I have used it with partners and, you know, just friends growing up saying that’s what, you know, it’s calming to go for a drive.
Let’s go for a scud.
And they look at me like the way I would look at my dad, you know, just like a mess.
Like, what, is this some kind of sandwich?
A scud?
Yeah, what is about to happen to me?
And no, I said we’re just going for a drive.
Well, you might gather up those words in your family lexicon and, you know, present them to the family as a gift sometime.
It’s a priceless thing.
Yeah, that’s a great idea.
And I think everyone would, it would help the newcomers, that’s for sure.
There’s an idea.
Yeah.
Well, thank you so much for calling.
Thank you so much for having me.
I appreciate the information.
Yeah, our pleasure.
Take care of yourself.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
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