Skoosh!

The word of the day over at Oxford English Dictionary is skoosh. Since it changes every day, and you have to be a subscriber to look it up, I'll reproduce the entry for it below (only the meanings, no quotations or datechart or pronunciation and so on).

Sc. Colloq.

I. Simple uses.

1. a. intr. Of a liquid: to gush, spurt, or squirt. Also: to emit liquid in a gush.

b. trans. To squirt or spray (a liquid); to wet with a jet or spray of liquid.

2. intr. To move rapidly, esp. (of a vehicle) with a swishing sound; to depart quickly. Also in imper. (Children's slang): ‘go away!’ ‘run for it!’.

II. Compounds.

3. skoosh car, (esp. in Glasgow) a tram (now hist. and rare).

Now why am I talking about this word? It's marked as Sc[ottish] Colloq[uial], so it's just a little quaint word used by us harmless Scots, right?

Well, not necessarily. I've seen this word cause heated debate. The main form I heard this word in is skooshy, as in skooshy cream - that is, whipped cream in a pressurised container. The stuff that goes "ksshhh" all over your dessert. Mmmmm.

The first question is rather bland, but important. Like many Scottish words, there is a debate over spelling. The Oxford English Dictionary lists <skoosh>, <scoosh>, and <schoosh>, and I've seen people even consider <squoosh> (only to change their minds when they realise that this is skwoosh). Anyway, none of these really feel right - using <k> feels too "hard", and with <c> it feels too "soft".

But the real debate is what skooshy cream is actually called. The manufacturers, and many English people I know, maintain that is is simple whipped cream. But that fails to distinguish between non-pressurised and pressurised creams, which can make all the difference. While hand-whipped cream is nice, there's nothing quite like having a skoosh of cream fluffed up by nitrous oxide all over your strawberries. (I don't think anyone has ever said that sentence before.) Another of my English friends, from Shropshire, claims to call it squirty cream. While this maintains the distinction, it just sounds wrong to my Scottish ears. Squirting is what waterguns do. (It also means something else, but I'll leave it to your imagination/googling.) Skoosh, however, is almost onomatopoeic in the way it expresses the smooth, fluid diffusion of luscious cream onto your favourite foods.

In conclusion, this is one of my favourite words. Not only is it useful in distinguishing types of cream (which is always a plus), it simply sounds scrumptious.

[Edit: I just remembered another use of skoosh, this time in a compound noun - tam skoosh, referring to tomato ketchup. I've heard this around Dumfries (mainly from my sister), and I don't know if it's found anywhere else in Scotland. Google gives no hits for it. Can anyone shed any light on this?]