The made-up term with which this entry is attitled is the source of the classic story about eskimos having 20, 47, or any other large number of words for 'snow.'
When building a robot, one tends to say a lot about making minute adjustments. And my coworkers have sprung into action with a plethora of words I don't recall ever hearing before.
The first one I noticed was 'scoche,' pronounced like 'scotia' without the 'uh,' and used as a noun as in "I think we need to move that over juuuust a scoche."
Next came 'cheech,' used more often as a verb, as in "I think later on we can cheech this over a bit," but later showing up occasionally as a noun, synonymous with 'scoche.'
A slightly different usage was selected for 'jot,' as in "It didn't make a jot of difference."
In another category, but impossible not to mention, was 'whopperjaw,' used in the passive to mean broken or messed up, as in "Somehow this got completely whopperjawed." Needless to say this is another topic often needing expression in the process of robot-building.
Comments (7)
!eeP IrP BeEp BeEp! = iz cold outside diz house!
January 12, 2004 9:01 PM
When we were recording our 5 song EP our producer had his own term for minute adjustments - cunt hair. As in, "I think that's off by a cunt hair". By the time we reached mixing he was just saying CH. Maybe you could try that one on - see how you like it.
January 13, 2004 7:08 AM
while i was reading this entry i, for some reason read "coworkers" as "cow-workers." Maybe I'm just used to seeing the hyphon in "co-werkers," but still, I can't help but feel buffoon-ish for reading it that way.
January 14, 2004 7:36 PM
and by co-werkers i mean co-workers
January 14, 2004 7:36 PM
Jay, Jay, Jay, tsk tsk tsk. Come on, "a skotch/skosh" is not only derived from the Japanese term "skoshi" for "a little", this was profiled in the Straight Dope column!
January 15, 2004 6:05 AM
Tha,
As usual your Straight Dope-derived knowledge puts me to shame. I'll have to add this to my small but growing mental list of Japanese words that have made it into English. If this word ever shows up in print (other than that Straight Dope column) maybe I'll give the OED a call.
Also, after hearing 'whopperjawed' a couple more times during our trip to California, I realized that it has a more specific meaning than simply "broken or messed up." It seems to refer to something being bent or warped to an undesirable angle. This makes sense for the 'jaw' suffix, although I don't know what the 'whopper' refers to. Probably not the malted candy.
January 18, 2004 3:51 PM
Never mind the last bit of the first paragraph, the OED already has this word with the spelling 'skosh,' and four citations to it that antedate the Straight Dope column. The first one is from a publication called American Speech that in 1955 called the dialect employing this word "Bamboo English." It also said that 'sukoshi's opposite, 'takusan,' is used as well, but apparently this didn't stick. The second citation is a record of a conversation that a professor had, a form that the OED now claims not to accept.
January 19, 2004 3:29 PM