Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2004

} R J Valentine wrote:
}> On Mon, 26 Jan 2004 16:12:32 GMT Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@earthlink.net> wrote:
}> ...
}> } To test that surmise, we need a list of words that are in
}> } _MWCD11_ and not in _MWCD10_.  We then need to look in the
}> } new m-w.com to see if those words are there.
}> ...
}>
}> That reminded me to look for "skosh" (which seems to have made the Oxford
}> family of dictionaries since it was discussed in alt.usage.english some
}> years ago).  Sure enough, MWCD11 has it.  I don't know about MWCD10.
}
} The ambiguity of "since" strikes again.  SOED4=NSOED had "skosh" in 1993.
} The word itself dates to the early-mid 50s (MW: 1952, OED: 1955), so it is
} possible that some pre-1993 Oxford dictionary had it.  Was the "some years
} ago" of the AUE discussion prior to 1993?

No, you're right and I'm wrong.  It is indeed in NSOED93.  The dictionary
I was thinking about came out a few years ago, a hefty one-volume
dictionary.  Was it the _Oxford American Dictionary_?  (I can't find my
copy where I remember leaving it or where I moved stuff from around
there to.)  The discussion of it here was a couple of years before that,
when Michael Quinion was posting more regularly here.  My recollection was
that the new dictionary had a nice definition of it (but then my
recollection of where the dictionary is or should be didn't pan out).

I think the word itself made the big time when it was used in the 1970s in
a pants commercial, where they were described as having "a skosh more
room".  Before that I heard it mainly in military contexts from people who
had spent time in Japan.

But _was_ it in MWCD10?  I don't have one of those.  It's not in my copy
of Webster's Third, and I couldn't find it in the 1987 OED Supplement.