What is the origin and meaning of going or being 'on the lam'.I see that it involves going off somewhere but is it running away as cowards or frolicking off in play or just avoiding work or does it suggest something else ? Whatever it is, Texan Democrats from the legislature have been doing it ( a report from ABC News)!

To be on the lam means to be in hurried flight, especially from the law. It is quite similar, I think, to the phrase used so often by British crime novelists: to do a bunk.

I can't find any etymology for it. The American Heritage Dictionary says its origin is unknown. The M-W Dictionary reports it to have been in use since 1897.

The term is not really used approriately for the Texas legislators you mention, Fred. They took off over the state line into Oklahoma to stage a protest over Republican effforts in Texas to cheat them out of representation in the U.S. Congress by means of a typical Republican "redistricting plan" (read gerrymander). They did not flee to Oklahoma to avoid the law. Indeed, their trouble with the law arises from the fact that they fled to Oklahoma--instead of reporting to the legislature in Austin, Texas.

[This message was edited by maiku on 05-15-03 at 08:39 AM.]

WordReference (1,2) speculates that it may come from the same Norse word (lemja, meaning thrash) as the verb lam, which means "to thrash or beat" or "to make a sweeping stroke or blow." They speculate that the phrase arose from the verb form because a beating would precede the running.

Word-detecive has a similar speculation, but spells the Norse word lamja and defines it as "to make lame." They believe that the phrase arose from the verb form because your feet hit the street as you run (similar to the phrase "beat it").

OzWords speculates the same root, noting that the Scandinavian word is similar to a Danish and Norwegian word (lamme, meaning 'paralyze'), but does not speculate on how the meaning came about.

Nothing conclusive, but some interesting speculation.

[This message was edited by methos5000 on 05-15-03 at 09:35 AM.]

Well 'lam' exists around here, in East Anglia, but not for that. In practising fielding with a bat and ball at school a friend would toss the ball to the batsman and yell 'Lam it one over here !'meaning 'take a hard swing at it and drive it towards me'. this was not everyday English but dialect. The Oxford English Dictionary says that it is 'perhaps of Scandinavian origin' and compares Danish 'lamme' meaning 'lame, paralyse'.The OED gives 1. Beat soundly,thrash, strike (now colloquial) C16 2. strike,attack with blows (into someone); hit (out) colloquial C19 . However Methos' Norse 'lam' is absolutely identical in meaning to my friend's 'lam' ; 'make a sweeping stroke or blow'. So how and why is a Cambridgeshire schoolboy speaking Norse? Easy. The whole area was invaded by Norsemen over a long period and was finally conquered by Danes. There are many Norse place names in the area. It is no surprise that they and the Danes left their language here and all up the East coast. So what if it was 1200 or more years ago ?Even the nursery rhyme 'Hickory, dickory, dock, the mouse ran up the clock' is Norse counting remembered;indeed the counting is still used up in Northumberland;a Norse-speaking boy at cricket down here should be no surprise ![ P.S. I have posted a 'helpful'(?) proposal under 'Have you seen your legislator' in Current Events (q.v.) !]

[This message was edited by FredPuli on 05-15-03 at 04:01 PM.]

Update on the Texas legislators who were accused of being "on the lam": their walkout (a much more fitting word) was highly successful. Their strategy defeated a nefarious Republican scheme to gerrymander congressional districts in Texas, designed not to insure fairer representation on the one-man one-vote principle, but to circumvent it most cynically, for the sole purpose of increasing the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. Good going, guys! Just shows that there still are some Texans who are committed to fair play.

Methos, the suggested etymologies of the slang phrase "on the lam" from the North Germanic word lemja or from any of its near equivalents are pretty silly, on the face of them. It is reminiscent of the kind of thing Latin grammarians used to do in explaining that bellum (for war) was called that because it was not beautiful (bellus). If the meaning of "on the lam" was derived in anything like the way your speculative sources claim, it would be a very novel thing in the way semantic change has been observed to work in the history of language. That's of course why responsible lexicographers who depend on real linguistic evidence ignore such speculation, and report that the etymology is, to date, simply unknown.

Like I said, interesting speculation .

Agreed, methos. (Though personally I'd substitute the word amusing for interesting).

Bellum 'war' is not from it being not 'bellum' 'pleasant,agreeable, good'? The fools! It's from 'bellio' 'an ox-eye daisy' isn't it, as in 'pushing up the daisies' meaning 'dead' ? It was originally 'duellum' in pre-classical times,with its origin in a Sanskrit word for 'two'. Some old soldiers had a 'bellum bellum', though, if some ancient veterans are to be believed!

You're no doubt thinking, Fred, of the infamous Roman martial formation known as the bellio ad belliam, right? (I've probably declined one or more of the nouns wrong, but I'm morally certain you will correct me on that.)

In any case, this formation is the one that is loosely translated as the daisy chain, in modern English, right? And it is of course at the same time the origin of the English calque belly-to-belly.

Amazing, when you think of it, how much power a dead language like Latin can still exert on British schoolboys and how much of it still manages to trickle down to some of us deprived of an expensive "public" school education.

I never thought of that, 'Belly to belly' could be as in 'it takes two to tango' ( not, it seems, from Latin 'tango' 'I touch' but possibly from some African word via American Spanish; now there's a surprise)!Latin is taught in many state schools here. I hope that the pupils, whether in a comprehensive or incarcerated in a public school, remember it better than I do.

[This message was edited by FredPuli on 05-19-03 at 04:57 AM.]

[This message was edited by FredPuli on 05-19-03 at 04:59 AM.]