vamoose \vuh-MOOSS\ verb
: to depart quickly
Did you know?
In the 1820s and '30s, the American Southwest was rough-and-tumble
territory -- the true Wild West. English-speaking cowboys, Texas
Rangers, and gold prospectors regularly rubbed elbows with
Spanish-speaking vaqueros in the local saloons, and a certain amount
of linguistic intermixing was inevitable. One Spanish term that caught
on with English speakers was "vamos," which means "let's go." Cowpokes
and dudes alike adopted the word, at first using a range of spellings
and pronunciations that varied considerably in their proximity to the
original Spanish form. But when the dust settled, the version most
American English speakers were using was "vamoose."
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