Word.ws English Dictionary

skedaddling

skedaddling is the present participle and gerund of skedaddle.

Meaning of skedaddle

Verb

skedaddle (third-person singular simple present skedaddles, present participle skedaddling, simple past and past participle skedaddled)

  1. (US, informal, intransitive) To move or run away quickly.
    • "Well," continued the youth, "lots of good-a-'nough men have thought they was going to do great things before the fight, but when the time come they skedaddled."1895 October, Stephen Crane, chapter II, in The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC, page 29
    Synonyms:
    beat feet
  2. (regional, transitive) To spill; to scatter.

See all 3 meanings of skedaddle

Questions about skedaddling

What is skedaddling the present participle and gerund of?
Skedaddling is the present participle and gerund of skedaddle.

Words near skedaddling in the dictionary

  1. skedaddle
  2. skedaddled
  3. skedaddler
  4. skedaddlers
  5. skedaddles
  6. skedaddling
  7. skedastic
  8. skedded
  9. skedding
  10. skedlock
  11. skedlocks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: skedaddling (page history and authors); skedaddle (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “skedaddling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/skedaddling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.