WTN: mosey
James Harbeck
mosey
One thing that gets on my nerves is when I really gotta mosey somewhere and there are people in my way on the sidewalk or the stairs or the escalator and they’re just, you know, moseying.
OK, did both of those uses of mosey make sense to you? The one meaning get moving, motor, vamoose, and the other meaning go slowly, meander, no hurry? One like a rolling stone, and the other gathering moss? I’m sure I’ve encountered both of them – well, I know I have, because I’ve encountered both of them in every dictionary I’ve looked up mosey in, but I think I’ve also encountered both in real life – but my impression is that one of them, the one I lean to automatically, is the more common expected sense. And that impression has been reinforced by an informal poll I did on Bluesky, where respondents unanimously agreed… not so much that it means one as that anyway it doesn’t mean the other.
I asked the following:
In your own usage, if you say you are (or were, or will be) moseying, are you meaning:
1) going quickly
2) going slowly
3) either, depending on context
4) nothing so specific as all that
5) some other thing (specify)
I got 35 responses. Of those, 32 agreed that “going slowly” was either the definition or at least part of the definition. The other three, along with some of the 32 who went with “going slowly,” specified that the important detail was aimlessness, nonchalance, casualness, lack of urgency, wandering, meandering, that manner of thing. No one went with “going quickly,” although one allowed that it could be used ironically with that sense, and another allowed some contextual flexibility.
So, naturally, I’m about to tell you that “go quickly, make haste, get a move on” is the older sense. Because of course. You saw it coming, didn’t you?
The word mosey first appeared in the US in the early 1800s, with the first known published instance in 1829. The earliest senses specify not so much the speed as the motivation: fleeing, decamping, escaping, getting out of the way. The implication is also typically doing so on foot. But there are instances where the sense of speed is inescapable, such as “At last the spell were broke, and I moseyed home at an orful rate” from 1859 (thanks to Green’s Dictionary of Slang for that). So, in short, we could say that the first sense of mosey is as a synonym of vamoose.
Well, vamoose first appeared as such about a decade after mosey did, so you could say as readily that vamoose was a synonym for mosey. But you know what I mean. But say… vamoose comes from Spanish vamos, ‘let’s go’. Could mosey have come from that, too?
Well, it could have. But we’re not a hundred percent sure. It could also come from an Algonquian word for ‘walk’. Or it could come from Mosey as a nickname for Moses, either in reference to the exodus led by the biblical Moses or to someone of that name in a popular song who had to flee creditors. We’re just not entirely sure. The word didn’t announce its arrival and origins. It just… moseyed in, real casual like.
But anyway, within a couple of decades, the sense of ‘go casually, wander, meander, amble aimlessly’ et cetera also moseyed in, often bringing along an adverb such as along or off or around. And, at leisure and at length, it prevailed. And it doesn’t seem like it’s going to get out the way any time soon.
Just like those people who manage to walk in the least hurried manner possible right down the middle of the stairs or sidewalk, vaguely trending slightly right and left but never giving a clear way to get by so you can make it to the walk light or the train that’s arriving in the subway station. Come, people! This ain’t a mo-seum!
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