{"id":15696,"date":"2018-06-11T17:00:48","date_gmt":"2018-06-11T16:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=15696"},"modified":"2018-06-11T17:00:48","modified_gmt":"2018-06-11T16:00:48","slug":"zhoozhing-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=15696","title":{"rendered":"Zhoozhing up"},"content":{"rendered":"

The word zhoozh<\/strong> [\u0292\u028a\u0283\/\u0292\u028a\u0292] was one of the words of the week on the episode of the Talk The Talk podcast<\/a> I listened to yesterday.<\/p>\n

There are various ways to write it: zhoozh, zhoosh, zhuzh, or even tszuj. It means “To tweak, finesse or improve (something); to make more appealing or exciting”, and is often used with up, e.g. to zhoozh up.<\/p>\n

Zhoozh was possibly first used in the 1970s in Polari, a cant or slang used by Romani people, and also gay people, in the UK, especially in theatres.<\/p>\n

It may come from the Angloromani yuser<\/em> (to clean) and yusher<\/em> (to clear), from yus-, yuz-, yuzh-<\/em> (clean) and yush-<\/em> (clear), from the Romani \u017eu\u017e-, u\u017e-<\/em> (clean\u201d).<\/p>\n

It is also used to mean to blend ingredients using a food mixer or blender. For example, throw the ingredients in the blender and give them a quick zhoozh.<\/p>\n

In South African slang it means stylish, hot, or cool. <\/p>\n

Source: Wiktionary<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

See also:
\nhttps:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/words-at-play\/zhuzh-zhoosh-queer-eye-origin-kressley<\/a>
\nhttp:\/\/phonetic-blog.blogspot.com\/2009\/03\/placeholder.html<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/www.urbandictionary.com\/define.php?term=zhoozh<\/a><\/p>\n

Are there any similar words in other languages?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The word zhoozh [\u0292\u028a\u0283\/\u0292\u028a\u0292] was one of the words of the week on the episode of the Talk The Talk podcast I listened to yesterday. There are various ways to write it: zhoozh, zhoosh, zhuzh, or even tszuj. It means “To tweak, finesse or improve (something); to make more appealing or exciting”, and is often […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,10,50,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-language","category-romani","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15696\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}