Zhuzh, Joozh, Zhoosh: to Adjust, Prettify, Make Neat

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha and Grant. This is Elijah from Akron, Ohio.

Welcome.

Welcome, Elijah. Elijah in Akron, Ohio.

Yes. A little bit of story behind this.

I started dating my girlfriend about seven months ago. Her name is Jenny.

And one day we’re out on a date and I’m pushing my hands through my hair, you know, like fixing it, making it look better.

And she says to me, you’re zhuzhing your hair.

And I’m like, what in the world is zhuzhing?

And she says, you know, zhuzh your hair.

And I said, no, no, I don’t know.

She says, you know, it makes it look better, fluffing it, whatever.

I said, I have never heard that before.

You made that up.

She said, no, I got it from my mother.

You know, we use it.

So it kind of became a joke with us that wherever I would go, I would kind of tick on it being not a word.

We would ask friends, have you ever heard of the word?

You know, what word would you use?

And no one had ever heard of zhuzh.

Until one day, I get a call from my girlfriend, and she says, I was talking with a friend,

And she knew the word zhuzh.

And I said, of course you found someone that knew zhuzh when I was not there.

But the girl who knew the word zhuzh, though, didn’t say it the way we say it.

I don’t remember how she said it, but it was definitely different, but the same kind of word.

Since then, I called her father to get more information about it because I knew I was wanting to call you guys,

And you guys would want to know where the word kind of came from.

And he said that he wasn’t really sure, and later he looked it up and actually found the word online on Webster Dictionary.

Though it’s not in the Webster Dictionary, it’s just defined on the website.

So now I’m calling to kind of know more about the word, where it came from, and if there’s any way you could help me to still be right.

Oh, boy. Tall order here.

I got to say, I like you a lot.

You seem like a real fun guy.

Elijah, you’re dynamic and exciting.

You’ve got a wonderful radio presence.

You sound like a good guy, but you’re going to go away wrong.

Oh, she’s going to love this.

You probably have great hair, though.

Probably have great hair.

You’ve got great choice in girlfriends.

Yeah, smart girlfriend.

How about that?

Let me lay some of this down for you.

This word has an interesting history.

It really came to the attention of most Americans with the first edition of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, which launched in 2003.

There was a guy on the show, a fashion guru named Carson Kressley, who loved the word.

And he would always talk about zhuzhing things.

And he meant to straighten or to make it prettier, to clean it up.

Or like you might zhuzh cuffs on a shirt to make them more orderly.

Or zhuzh just something to make it less wrinkled or something like that.

And the spelling, of course, is hard for this.

So it’s really hard to Google.

So I’m not surprised you didn’t find it right away.

But a lot of times it’s spelled Z-H-U-Z-H.

But there’s like nine different spellings for this.

Like Z-H-O-O-S-H.

That’s the one I found, yeah.

J-O-O-S-H, something like that.

Yeah, there’s a bunch of these.

So anyway, Carson, on the first Queer Eye, he’s the guy who really launched this.

But it’s older than that.

And actually, it’s got connections to gay culture and a kind of secret gay language that was in the United Kingdom in the 1960s that has its roots in Romany, the language spoken by the travelers, sometimes called the gypsies.

Yeah, that’s a lot more than I was expecting.

Right?

Yes, so we have mentions of this as far back as possibly the 1960s, but definitely by 1977,

Popping up in periodicals related specifically to gays in the United Kingdom as this kind of secret

Language, or I won’t say a language, it’s more like a lingo that they could use to kind of like

Do a wink and a nudge to let each other know that they’re part of the scene when

Being gay wasn’t necessarily accepted in large parts of society in the United Kingdom.

Now, the lexicon for Jonathan Green suggests that it comes from a Romani word meaning to clean or neat.

He spells it Z-H-O-U-Z-H-O.

So it kind of lingered in the speech of gay men in the United Kingdom, showed up in fashion culture,

Arrived in the U.S., showed up in fashion culture in New York, still kind of lingered among gay men.

And then before you know it, it’s in the gay men who were on the first edition of Queer Eye for the Street Guy.

And then Blammo, the success of that show, launched it larger into American culture as a whole.

Wow.

Yeah.

That is a lot of history behind it.

Right?

That’s actually really neat.

It is really neat, right?

My girlfriend’s mother comes from that area up in the Pennsylvania, kind of New York-y area.

So I can kind of see where that may have come from.

Do you think she’s a part of the – is she a part of gay culture?

Or worked in the fashion industry or anything like that?

No, neither of those things.

Neither of those things.

Yeah, I remember that being so catchy at the time

Because we’re talking 2003.

Right.

And here was Carson being so exuberant.

I remember him doing zhuzhing with hair mostly.

Yeah, right.

Zhuzh.

And he was unapologetic about it too.

And people were doing little mini-glossaries

Of the language that they were using on the show

Just like people still do for RuPaul and his shows.

And so, Elijah, I wouldn’t feel bad about your girlfriend being right because it is a great story.

It’s a pretty interesting word.

I’m delighted to find that you guys are connecting on this cool word with this cool history.

I’m very glad, too, and she’s going to love being right.

I actually don’t hate being wrong at this moment.

No, no.

Pretty interesting.

Thank you guys so much.

Consider it something learned, and you just give her her moment, make her dinner, and you’ve got something you grew on, right?

Perfect.

That sounds great.

Yeah.

Thanks for your call.

We really appreciate it.

Yeah, give her our best.

Thank you so much.

Have a good one, guys.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.