Zhush...juege..zsuzsh?

Question

Heard a radio announcer use this word this morning. Talked about 'zhushing' up some-one's car.
Basically meaning 'to add glamour' (recently made famous by Queer Eye for the Straight Guy). But I'm damned if I can work out a way to spell it.

Discussion here, for those interested;
http://pub122.ezboard.com/fwordoriginsorgfrm11.showMessage?topicID=468.topic

Dylan

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]Heard a radio announcer use this word this morning. Talked about 'zhushing' up some-one's car.[/nq]
"sprucing up"?
(snip)
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
I have preferences.
You have biases.
He/She has prejudices.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Heard a radio announcer use this word this morning. Talked about 'zhushing' up some-one's car.[/nq]
[nq:1]"sprucing up"?[/nq]
Juicing up?

Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Heard a radio announcer use this word this morning. Talked about'zhushing' up some-one's car.[/nq]
[nq:1]"sprucing up"?[/nq]
Similar meaning, but definitely not the same word. The actual pronounciation varies a little. The first consonant is always the 'zh' sound from pleasure, but the final consonant can vary between this and a soft 'sh' or a regular buzzing 'z'. The vowel is sometimes 'oo', sometimes a schwa, and sometimes something in between.
Apparently some dictionaries now list it, but I've yet to find one (online at any rate). I'm curious how they actually spell it.

Dylan

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Similar meaning, but definitely not the same word. The actual pronounciation varies a little.[/nq]
^^^ I feel a self-Oy moment coming on...

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Heard a radio announcer use this word this morning. Talked about 'zhushing' up some-one's car.[/nq]
[nq:1]"sprucing up"?[/nq]
The word has an onomatopoeic feel about it.
Jp

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]"sprucing up"?[/nq]
[nq:1]Juicing up?[/nq]
Interesting. I wrote that first, but then was unsure. I have definitely heard "sprucing up". My dad used it.
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
I have preferences.
You have biases.
He/She has prejudices.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]"sprucing up"?[/nq]
[nq:1]Juicing up?[/nq]
Souping up?
soup up sth or soup sth up
INFORMAL
to improve something by making it more powerful or more interesting
Circuit boards can be used to soup up existing machines.

souped-up
adjective
INFORMAL
He patrols the nightclubs on a souped-up scooter.
(from Cambridge International Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs)

Best Donna Richoux

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Juicing up?[/nq]
[nq:1]Souping up?[/nq]
Except that's not at all what the announcer meant. Anyway, there's plenty of websites discussing the word. The most accepted spelling seems to be 'zhuzh', which reasonably well captures the pronunciation.

Dylan

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Souping up?[/nq]
[nq:1]Except that's not at all what the announcer meant. Anyway, there's plenty of websites discussing the word. The most accepted spelling seems to be 'zhuzh', which reasonably well captures the pronunciation.[/nq]
Aha, yes, "zhuzh" appears to be a recent phenomenon. Far more pages mentioning it than using it, if you know what I mean. A signal that the word isn't truly part of the language. Yet.
http://www.guidemag.com/magcontent/invokemagcontent.cfm?ID=8D63ACE0-97E9 -44C3-B4378D3F155D6196
December 2003
Zhuzh
A queer neologism
By Blanche Poubelle
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy has made quite a
splash on the Bravo cable network this year. For
those readers unfamiliar with the show, it involves the Fab 5 five gay men who are experts in fashion, hair, design, food, and culture who do a make-over of a slobbish straight man in each episode.
The Fab 5 have certainly contributed to promoting
gay New York style around the country, but they've also introduced many of us to a new word zhuzh.
Kyan, the hair stylist, is the fondest of the word, and for him it seems to mean something like 'arrange your hair in a way that looks stylishly messy'.
Zhuzhing is done after applying a product (which the manufacturers have no doubt paid to have placed in the episode). Blanche thought for a while that
zhuzhing was specific to hair styling, but then she heard Carson, the fashionista, apply it to a
particular way of rolling up shirt sleeves to give them a similarly fashionably messy look.
...Zhuzh is primarily a verb in the Queer Eye
episodes, and is often used in combination with up, as in "to zhuzh your sleeves up." The word has
spread beyond Queer Eye and seems generally to mean 'make fashionable'. When applied to the general
project of making everything stylish, it sometimes takes the object it, as in "zhuzhing it up for some special occasion."
Although the verbal use is predominant now, Miss
Poubelle was intrigued to find that in some older
citations, zhuzh is actually an adjective, meaning something like 'fashionable'. The oldest instance
she could locate is from a 1997 article in a South African newspaper story about a Hooker's Ball in
Cape Town. Readers were urged to "book tickets to
this zhoozh affair." It's easy to see how the word might make the transition from adjective to verb...

I've snipped some further, rather aimless, speculation about origins. The sensible thing to do would be to pursue the South African connection.

Best Donna Richoux

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I've snipped some further, rather aimless, speculation about origins. The sensible thing to do would be to pursue the South African connection.[/nq]
Seek out the Polari. More commonly spelled 'zhoosh', but 'zhooshing your riah' was an essential prelim to showing your eek.
John Dean
Oxford

Zhush...juege..zsuzsh?

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