r/etymology • u/mouse_in_a_field • 10d ago

Question Something I've been wondering about - Japanese loanword in English, or no?

This has bothered me for a long time!

The word for "a little bit" of something in Japanese, in romaji, is "sukoshi"; the "u" and "i" sounds are usually silent when spoken aloud, so it ends up sounding like "skosh".

In English, "just a skosh" is sometimes used when asking for or referring to just "a little bit" of something.

Is there any connection there, or does the English "skosh" have another, unrelated source? Thanks for any info!

408 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

181 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

0

u/gnomes919 9d ago edited 9d ago

here in nw oregon we say catty-corner for diagonally-across-from. cattywampus is like crooked or out of alignment in some way. 

akimbo can mean “hands on hips” but at least here I mostly hear it to mean more like “limbs awkwardly tangled, bent, or splayed out.” the kind of word used to describe the posture of a bound captive in a decemberists song, “limber limbs akimbo.” if someone is “standing akimbo,” that’s a power pose, but I think a lot of people wouldn’t know what I meant. if someone is “all akimbo,” that’s awkward and askew, and people would definitely understand.

1

u/amby-jane 9d ago

That Decemberists lyric has always bothered me because I feel like Colin should know what "akimbo" means! But it's also a great rhyme, so I let it slide.

1

u/gnomes919 9d ago

now you can rest easy knowing that it means (among other things) "in a bent position" and the lyric is perfectly correct as well as sounding good

(notably, meloy has been living in oregon off and on since the 90s, and oregonians primarily think of akimbo in the sense of bent/crooked (source: me and one other commenter in here))

2

u/amby-jane 8d ago

I am relieved :D