OAD WOTY; Gawker on "squick"

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:13 PM -0500 12/8/05, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>"Podcast" is the Oxford American Dictionary's word of the year, in
>case you haven't heard...
>
>http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/051205/nym208.html
>
>On OUPblog, Erin McKean gives a run-down of the runners-up:
>
>http://blog.oup.com/oupblog/2005/12/podcasting_is_t.html
>
>The blog entry also links to Gawker, which reproduces an email
>exchange between the OAD and a reader about the revolting origins of
>one runner-up, "squick":
>
>http://www.gawker.com/news/email/unsurprisingly-lexicographers-give-good-email-141870.php
>
>
Very enlightening.  But I think the OUP folks are missing the boat if
they're claiming that _squick_ is (i) onomatopoeic in origin and (ii)
derived from the practice of skull-fucking.  If we are to retain
hypothesis (ii), which seems plausible, I think a much more elegant
etym(yth)ology is from an orthographic truncation and revocalization:

sku[ll-f]uck > sku'uck > skuick

Remember, you read it here first...

L