Faithful link-provider Trevor sent me a BBC story about a parliamentary first:
The popular Welsh word cwtch has been used for the first time in the UK Parliament. It commonly means a hug or cuddle but has no literal English translation. Brecon and Radnorshire MP Fay Jones said cwtch while questioning Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the House of Commons on 5 January. It is the only time the word has been recorded in Hansard, which publicly publishes a record of all parliamentary debates verbatim.
The Conservative politician was criticising Wales’ Covid regulations last Wednesday and said: “On Friday, I will be holding my team meeting in the local pub because under Welsh government rules we are not allowed to go to our socially distanced office. We cannot do Parkrun and we cannot watch outdoor sport on the touchline – but we can cwtch up together in the clubhouse to watch it.” […]
Ms Jones tweeted: “Absolutely delighted to learn this morning that my use of the word ‘cwtch’ in the Commons last week was the first time that word has ever been used in Parliament.” In 2019, another Welsh MP, Rhondda’s Chris Bryant, was making an ultimately unsuccessful run for election as Commons Speaker when he said that MPs “need more of a cwtch” – although he said it in interviews outside the chamber.
I was, of course, intrigued by the word; fortunately, the OED added it in December 2005:
Etymology: Apparently originally < Welsh cwts, cwtsh couch, resting place, recess (15th cent.), (regional (south.)) cuddle, hug (20th cent. or earlier) < couch n.¹
now Welsh English.
1. A cupboard or cubby-hole, esp. used as a hiding place.
1890 J. D. Robertson Gloss. Words County of Gloucester 27 Cooch and corner, nook and cranny.
[…]
1992 Times (Nexis) 28 Feb. And our house like most of the others had a cwch under the stairs, which was the cupboard.
2004 Western Mail (Cardiff) (Nexis) 6 Aug. 15 They assured us if the atom bomb dropped, we’d have three whole minutes (or was it four?) to put brown paper over the windows, retreat to the cwtch under the stairs, and stay cwtched for three or four weeks.2. A cuddle; a hug. Cf. cwtch v. 2 [To hug or cuddle (a person)].
1992 Times 28 Feb. (Life & Times section) 4/6 ‘Come and have a cwch,’ (rhymes with butch) mothers say to their children.
2000 N. Griffiths Grits (2001) 403 There’s tears in her eyes again so a give her a cwtch—a great big one and bollox to embarrassment.
2005 Western Mail (Cardiff) (Nexis) 22 June 11 Utter the immortal words, ‘Come ‘ere and ‘ave a cwtch then,’ and hope that your recipient does not turn and flee.
A fine word; thanks, Trevor!
They should offer it in wordle.
Heh. The subject line of Trevor’s e-mail was “A good one for wordle?”
Now I want to pronounce it with [tx].
The BBC’s description of it as a “Welsh word” seems inaccurate if the OED’s got it and it was used by the relevant MP right in the middle of an English sentence. Surely it’s an English word, albeit a loanword of Welsh origin?
It seems like if you’re spelling it cwtch, rather than cwtsh or cwts, and using it in an English sentence, then it’s probably an English word. But then cwtch isn’t a very English spelling either. If you’re going to anglicize the spelling, why leave the w?
https://languagehat.com/is-cearta-daonna-iad-cearta-teanga/#comment-4357177
Needless to say, I had utterly forgotten that exchange…
Cwtch is like cwm (cf. coomb or coombe) and crwth (cf. crowd, the musical instrument). Are there others used in English? Curious that these three all begin with c.
Coochie-coo and such baby-babble would be relevant. A more adult connection might be hoochy koochy (spelling varies):
https://www.etymonline.com/word/hoochy%20koochy#etymonline_v_14419
That explanation makes no mention of cwtch. Perhaps it should, for two reasons:
1. Cwtch as “nook” or “cranny” suggests cooch or coochie as vagina. See Etymonline, again, linked to that entry for hoochy koochy:
coochie (n.)
“vagina,” slang, by 1991, perhaps from hoochie-coochie, especially in the blues song “Hoochie Coochie Man” by Willie Dixon (1954), featuring a sexually suggestive phrase that traces at least to the 1893 World’s Fair (see hoochy koochy).
2. A more direct connection, already suggested, with amorous cuddling in some cosy corner.
I am very skeptical of the Welsh etymology. The fact that you can come up with two reasonable-sounding but mutually exclusive etymologies shows that the methodology has at least a 50% chance of being wrong. Plus, what other slang terms came into AmE from Welsh at that time?
Green does much better, I think: “ety. unknown; perhaps no more than a showman’s idea of an ‘exotic’ or ‘Oriental’ name, the vowels of which suggest the sinuous gyrations of the dancer.” I think Hoochie-Coochie was the source of cooch and hoochie mama, reinforced by sound symbolism.
That said, hooch ‘liquor’ apparently comes from Tlingit.
The fact that you can come up with two reasonable-sounding but mutually exclusive etymologies shows that the methodology has at least a 50% chance of being wrong.
No, there may be convergence, or some kind of cross-influence. Both are common enough. And nothing here shows the probability of the methodology being wrong, since the findings are avowedly conjectural and probabilistic anyway. As with much in etymology. See OED, passim.
Plus, what other slang terms came into AmE from Welsh at that time?
OED gives the nouns moochin, blas, and parch as coming into English (tout court) from Welsh in 20C. AmE is relevant when considering hoochy koochy, but less when we consider the other words of interest here. Then there’s corgi, which is not slang but how much does that matter?
“perhaps no more than a showman’s idea of an ‘exotic’ or ‘Oriental’ name”
Perhaps, right. Or again, perhaps multiple causation.
reinforced by sound symbolism
Ah yes, a kind of cross-influence.
In the OED, moochin ‘A difficult or disagreeable person, esp. a child.’ and parch ‘clergyman’ only appear in Dylan Thomas. blas ‘accent’ is in Scottish English and Irish English, from the respective languages, though “cognate with Welsh blas ‘taste’.” corgi is a technical term for a Welsh dog, for which there was no other term (btw, C. L. B. Hubbard, Pembrokeshire Corgi Handbook: “The plural of Corgi is Corgwn and not Corgis.”)
In other words, none of these illustrate a path from Welsh into ca. 1900 lower class American English.
Can’t help but think of “kvetch”, which in Israeli hebrew usage can absolutely mean “congregate in close proximity”.
Hey so what’s the pronunciation here, anyway?
/kʊtʃ/.
I only know kvetch in the meaning of ‘squish’. How do you use it as ‘congregate in close proximity’? As a reflexive (hitpael)?
In other words, none of these illustrate a path from Welsh into ca. 1900 lower class American English.
We just don’t know. None of them proves such a path, granted. And no one is claiming a direct route. Such is etymological speculation. Note, in any case, for coochie as I quoted above:
“featuring a sexually suggestive phrase that traces at least to the 1893 World’s Fair”
That huge event in Chicago (27,300,000 visitors, says Wikipedia) was international as the name suggests. It also suggests what we already have good indpendent reason to believe in: much transatlantic linguistic intercourse that would very likely contribute to demotic vocabulary. Such are the ways of etymology. Compare Portuguese sources for Japanese words, and so on and on.
Yes, or as in “it was kvetch in there”, “we were all, like, kvetch”. I mainly meant to differentiate from the meaning others might be more familiar with, much weaker in Hebrew, “complain”.
German quetschen “squeeze”, zerquetschen “squish, squash”.
…all the way to the medical term Quetschung, which… Wikipedia redirects to Prellung “contusion”. I find that strange, because prellen refers to inflicting one sudden hit, not long-term pressure.
Suppose someone repeatedly slinks out of pubs without paying his tab. This puts long-term pressure on the landlords to ban him, and yet it’s still a case of die Zeche prellen.
blas ‘accent’ is in Scottish English and Irish English, from the respective languages, though “cognate with Welsh blas ‘taste’.”
Per the English Wikt, it means 'taste' in all four languages (there is no entry for Breton). Additionally, in Irish it means 'anything/nothing', as in Ní bhfuair mé blas, ‘I didn’t get anything’, which presumably began life as ‘I didn’t [even] get a taste [of sth]’.
As a New York Jew, I have been saying “kvetch” all my life, and have never had the slightest hint of its “squeeze together” meaning, only of the “complain” one. Learn something every day, I guess.