tjuzsing

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Tuesday, September 23, 2003, at 06:44 AM, Steve Kl. wrote:

> On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>>
>> We have evidence for a variety of spellings, but _tjuzs_ is
>> not one of them. And I think I'm going to ignore it this
>> time as well.
>
> The only reason I brought this one up is that it's from the Bravo
> website,
> which is the official site of the show which spawned it.

the spelling is pretty clearly deliberately bizarre.  i would have
spelled it <zhuzh>, with <u> representing the [U] of <book>.

steve suggests looking at gore vidal's works.  not very likely.

an outside possibility is the Polari word <shush>.  see paul baker's
Polari - The Lost Language of Gay Men.

or someone could ask carson (from Queer Eye) if he remembers where he
first heard the word.

it could, of course, be an invention.  onomatopoetic, suggesting
smoothness.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)