Scudding. That's an interesting word. It's a pity, but only clouds are allowed to go scudding. Authors like to say things like, "The next morning the surf was up and there were scudding clouds crossing the sky."

Scudding clouds are low clouds that move rather quickly. That's bad news for sailors, so you know the author is planning to send some of his characters to sea at a time when they should have stayed ashore.

If you check your dictionary, you may find that scudding is a step in preparing hides for tanning, but I don't want to go into that. Cloud scudding is much more interesting.

As always, I wonder about the origin of the term.
It probably goes back to British sailors in the time when the England ruled the seas. But could there be other uses for the term? How about sledders scudding down a hill in the snow? Or traffic scudding on the Interstate? Or maybe war planes scudding in on a bombing run?

Maybe someday we'll all know how to scud like those lucky clouds.
Howard