KouSeiya315 wrote:

Are you referring to "sukoshi"?

That's what I was thinking. As for me, I don't think sukoshi and scoochie sound that much alike.

Geezer wrote:

Or did the Japanese pick it up from English after the war?

I'd bet 500,000 �� (rin) that the two are not etymologically related. (BTW, a rin is very sukoshi).

Also, sukoshi is spelled ����, and borrowed words in Japanese are mostly spelled in katakana, not kanji.

In the Navy we used to think "stinko" meant being drunk in Japanese.

It's not (unless it's Okinawa dialect) but where did it come from?
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vibius wrote:

I'd bet 500,000 �� (rin) that the two are not etymologically related. (BTW, a rin is very sukoshi). Also, sukoshi is spelled ����, and borrowed words in Japanese are mostly spelled in katakana, not kanji.

Actually, we do have the word "skosh" in English, and it was in fact introduced into the English language by American soldiers serving in Japan some time ago.
A quick search on wikipedia (I'm faaaaar too lazy to do it right now) will give the exact details.

Linguistically speaking, it's not hard to imagine "skosh" being changed into "scooch" in some dialects of English. Not only does it look more like English orthography, it also sounds more English-like.

The more you know ���c

HTH,
������
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kokuou wrote:

Actually, we do have the word "skosh" in English, and it was in fact introduced into the English language by American soldiers serving in Japan some time ago.

Funny you mention that. The first time I heard the word was when I was in the Navy. We were working on something, got done, and I asked the guy in charge what he thought, he took one look at it and said, "Skoosh" I'm looking at him thinking