Etymology

Skutnik

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Today it means: A guest at the State of the Union address or a similar political event. Full definition →

Romanian scuti
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The story

  1. Romanian · derived fromscuti“to absolve”
  2. English todaySkutnik

The name is thought to derive from Romanian scuti (“to absolve”); compare Romanian Scutelnici. The common noun comes from Martin Leonard Skutnik III, a guest at the 1982 State of the Union address; see quotations below.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.