v. U.S. colloq. Also vamos, vamous, vamoos, varmoose. [ad. Sp. vamos let us go.]
1. intr. To depart, make off, decamp, disappear.
α. 1848. Journ. of Com., June, in Bartlett, Dict. Amer., 373. Its occupants … forthwith vamosed with their baggage.
1855. Haliburton, Nat. & Hum. Nat., I. 112. I makes a spring in after him, and caught him by the hair of the head, just as he was vamosing.
1893. McCarthy, Red Diamonds, I. 173. The fifth name was that of Ratt Gundy, opposite to which Seth Chickering had written the one word: ‘Vamosed.’
β. 1859. Slang Dict., 114. Vamous, to go, or be off.
1862. Illustr. Lond. News, 24 May, 540/3. Guess, they’d better varmoose.
1874. M. Collins, Frances, III. 80. If I can get money down for some of my gold bonds, we’ll vamoos at once.
1895. J. G. Millais, Breath fr. Veldt (1899), 175. The hunter was voted a fraud … and was … told to ‘vamoose.’
2. trans. To decamp or disappear from; to quit hurriedly. Freq. in phr. to vamose the ranch.
1852. F. Marryat, Gold Quartz Mining, 8. On the old Californian principle of ‘making a “pile” and vamosing the ranche.’
1857. in Thornton, Amer. Gloss. Another pair of jail-birds have vamosed the log jail at Jacksonville.
1888. E. B. Custer, Tenting on Plains, i. (1893), 32. I got that far when the eyes of the old galoots started out of their heads, and they vamoosed the ranche.
