zhoosh
/ʒʊʃ/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
21
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "Mostly the words are dusted off and brought out when we wish to zhoosh up the conversation, to announce a particular delight in our queenly style."
- "Mr. Warburton, a volunteer, swept into the group’s headquarters in the Hotel Pennsylvania, a team of hair stylists in tow, his objective to “zhoosh up” the women’s looks, he said."
- "Christmas dinner is stressful enough without busting out recipes you’ve never made before. That said, if Sue is after a little zhoosh, she might want to consider how she dresses her veg."
- "For quotations using this term, see Citations:zhoosh."
- "Thank you for your happiness and your eternal Bona-ness and zhoosh."
- "I grew up in a rain-lashed industrial town near London. Glamour and excitement were thin on the ground. The Swinging Sixties had yet to swing. No telly, no luxuries, no zhoosh. Except at Christmas time. Once a year, the local department store would festoon the window displays with twinkly lights and fake garland."
Etymology
UK 1960s. Unclear origin; one explanation is that it was borrowed from Angloromani yuser (“clean”, verb) and yusher (“clear”, verb), from Angloromani yus-, yuz-, yuzh- (“clean”) and yush- (“clear”), from Romani žuž-, už- (“clean”, adjective) (also compare Hindi उज्ज्वल (ujjval, “bright”)), but this has been seen as problematic. Another theory is that the term is instead an "expressive formation" similar to whoosh and swish. The South African sense reportedly comes from a regional pronunciation of "Jewish", alluding to the high reputation of Jewish tailors at the time, but this has also been considered unlikely. All senses originated around the same time, with the first attributed use of the noun in 1968 and the verb in 1970.
Word Breakdown
- Root: yuser, yuse, užo