scat

Meanings

Noun

• A tax; tribute.
• A land-tax paid in the Shetland Islands.
• Animal excrement; droppings, dung.
• Heroin.
• Whiskey.
• Coprophilia.
• A brisk shower of rain, driven by the wind.
• Scat singing.
• Any fish in the family Scatophagidae

Verb

• To sing an improvised melodic solo using nonsense syllables, often onomatopoeic or imitative of musical instruments.
• To leave quickly.

Origin

• From Middle English scet, schat, from Old English sceatt and Old Norse skattr; both from Proto-Germanic *skattaz, from Proto-Indo-European *skatn-, *skat-. Cognate with Scots scat, West Frisian skat, Dutch schat, German Schatz, Swedish skatt, Icelandic skattur, Latin scateō.
• Origin uncertain. Both the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster suggest derivation from Ancient Greek σκῶρ, compare English scato-, but Random House Dictionary suggests that the popular character of the word makes this unlikely. Perhaps from English dialectal scat, or an alteration of shit, which is also used for "drugs, heroin".
• Probably imitative.
• From scoot, from the root of shoot. Alternatively, from the expression quicker than scat, perhaps representing a hiss followed by the word cat. Compare Swedish schas ("shoo, begone").
• From the taxonomic name of the family