"Scritch"

Jim Parish jparish at SIUE.EDU
Fri Feb 3 16:41:11 UTC 2006


On another list, a correspondent from the Netherlands was puzzled by
the word "scritch", meaning the kind of affectionate rubbing/scratching
one applies to a pet's ears. My first encounter with the word was in a
Peanuts cartoon in the '60s, in which Charlie Brown demonstrated the
difference between scritching and scratching to Lucy. Two questions:

1) How widely known is the word? (Are other USAn, or non-USAn,
listmembers familiar with it?)

2) Did Charles Schulz actually coin the word?

Jim Parish

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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