wooch

[Gerald Cohen]

  In a Feb. 9 message Joan Hall wrote:

>Is anyone familiar with "wooch," meaning a slave or servant?  E.g., "Would
>you please hand me my book from over there?"  "I'm not your wooch."
>
-----From the absence of replies thus far, I assume everyone on the list is
drawing a blank.  I also assume that Joan Hall has  "wooch" from very few
informants (probably just one).

    So here is my thought on the term:  It's probably a childish word for
"dog", deriving from "poochie-woochie", with childish reduplication on the
order of "tootsy-wootsy, "eentsy-weentsy," etc.  So  in the above quote
("I'm not your wooch") the person is really saying "I'm not your dog  which
will run and fetch things for you."

 -----Gerald Cohen



gcohen at umr.edu