Scot-free means to leave without payment, not to be confused with frugality. The term comes from the Scandinavian language and refers to payment or sharing. It is not a racial slur against Scots.
Going out without paying refers to someone who leaves without payment, monetary or otherwise. Indeed, in modern usage, it often refers to suspects who have not been convicted of a crime. If a person thinks the suspect should have been convicted, he might say, “That guy is fine with it.”
Often the term is confused with frugality which is sometimes attributed to the Scots. Actually, the Scots term predates the old Gaelic which would have been spoken by the Scots. In fact the word has its origins in the Scandinavian language and probably descends to the English language via Anglo-Saxon.
Scot literally translates to payment. So getting out of it unscathed doesn’t mean having to pay the payment, or the payment is free. In medieval England, people sometimes paid a tax called a scot which would be used to fund relief programs for the exceptionally poor, not that such relief programs numbered many.
The paid Scotsman was also called a lot, shorted by the allotted share of the payout. The two terms married naturally, producing a word for both payment and sharing. If a person could somehow avoid making a payment, he got away with it.
Now a Scot could represent any type of payment, and is often used when referring to paying a bar bill. Each person who drinks owes a scot, a portion of a shared tab. A person who doesn’t pay his salary gets away with it.
Unscrupulous dating involves evading, intentionally or unintentionally, the dues you are supposed to pay. It is often annoying to others if people avoid paying what everyone else has to pay. This is especially true if you avoid a bar tab’s scot, since everyone else will have to pay extra to compensate for the person who went down without a scot.
It is good to know that a frequently used term is not actually a racial slur intended to insult Scots. Many frequently used terms have their origins in language that deliberately insults the race or gender of others. Fortunately, scot-free is free from this stain.
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