Skosh

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>I've read the several replies, and no one mentions what I remember.
>Though I haven't heard it in many years, I do remember fairly common
>usage in the early to mid 1950s, but I remember it as pronounced skoosh
>or skootch, with the vowel of boot.

I haven't heard it that way. It is, I suppose, a further adaptation to
English which didn't fully catch on. [Cf. Japanese "sake" > English "saki"
(so pronounced and sometimes so spelled), or "sukebe" > "skibby"/"skivvy",
since final /E/ is not usual. Neither is terminal /ouS/: there are "gauche"
and a few esoterica.]

Levi's ads showing "a skosh more room" appear in the 1980's according to
on-line news search. In a couple of cases it's spelled "skoosh".

Now here's something interesting. Of course "scooch [down]" meaning "crouch
[down]" is old. But what about "scooch [over]" meaning "scoot [over]"? DARE
shows this only from 1965 or later. Here is one of the citations: <<1994
... _Skootch over_ -- To move something a _skoash_ or more.>>.

Hmmm ... what is a "skoash"? It doesn't appear in my books, it doesn't
appear in DARE ... but we know what it must be, right?

So is "sukoshi" an ancestor of "scooch [over]"? {I don't know.]

-- Doug Wilson