> 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."

Funny you should bring it up, but I just passed it in Bill Bryson's /Notes from a Big Country/. I can't quite find the page now, but it's when he's discussing the dwindling local dialects and the general greying of language. It's a nautical term for a quick journey which, somewhere in Vermont if I remember correctly, has passed into general dry-land use.

He doesn't say whether they invented it there or copied it from another country, mind.