I'd have protested that the proper phrase is "
on the lam"...
But then, that would be both OT and nitpicky.
Hehe, but, you know I can't help it
The Old Norse word "
lamja", meaning "to make lame" is at root here.
The original meaning of "lam," when it first appeared in English back in the 16th century, was "to beat soundly." The wordplay ties into taking flight thusly:
"According to Mencken's 'American Language' and the 'Thesaurus of American Slang' by Berry and Van den Bark, 'lam, lammister' and 'on the lam' -- all referring to hasty departure -- were common in thieves' slang before the start of this century. Mencken quotes a newspaper report on the origin of 'lam' which actually traces it indirectly back to Shakespeare's time -- 'Its origin should be obvious to anyone who runs over several colloquial phrases for leavetaking, such as 'beat it' and 'hit the trail'.The allusion in 'lam' is to 'beat,' and '
beat it' is Old English, meaning 'to leave.' (
to 'beat a path' towards escape, as it were). During the period of George Ade's 'Fables in Slang' (1900), cabaret society delight in talking slang, and 'lam' was current.
Like many other terms, it went under in the flood of new usages of those days, but was preserved in criminal slang. A quarter of a century later it reappeared.' The Sage of Baltimore goes on to quote a story from the 'New York Herald Tribune' in 1938 which reported that 'one of the oldest police officers in New York said that he had heard 'on the lam' thirty years ago."
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I have wayyy too much time on my hands....