Don’t Be a Skutch

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Brittany.

I’m calling from Greencoast Springs, Florida.

I was wanting to get some information about a word that my mother used to use in referring to me when I was a child.

When I was younger, she’d be like, Brittany, quit being such a scooch when I was, you know, being kind of grumpy or irritated.

I was wondering if there’s any origin to that word.

Am I hearing scooch?

Scooch.

How would you spell that?

I have no idea of mine.

I can’t ask my mother.

She is no longer with us.

We know something about this, if this is the term I’m thinking of.

When she said, don’t be a scooch, what were you doing?

Being annoying or irritating or, you know, trying to get her attention or being kind of grumpy.

Yeah, that fits. That fits. Do you come from an Italian-American background?

Yes, and Irish.

And Irish. The reason I ask is that this word is common in Italian-American communities in New York, in New Jersey, and possibly some other places.

So it’s a known term that means a pain, like a pain in the neck or a pest, somebody who’s annoying.

And it comes from an Italian word, scucciare, S-C-O-C-C-I-A-R-E, scucciare, and it means to annoy.

And so you might find it in longer forms like scucciare, which means a pain in the head, or scucciare, scucciare, which means a real pain, and then a couple other ones, which mean a pain in the genitals.

I don’t think she meant that one.

Scucciare.

Yeah, so all of these are just about being an annoying person.

And they all come from dialect pronunciations and don’t sound much like modern-day Italian.

So they’re kind of specific to the Italian-American communities.

Gotcha. That actually makes sense.

My mom grew up in Long Island.

Aha, there we go. Yeah.

And so it’s definitely part of the Long Island scene.

One really interesting side note, we talked about this years ago and got an email from Maria in Uruguay, who says in Uruguay and Argentina, they have also borrowed that Italian word, scochare.

And so they now have a Spanish verb, escochar, meaning to annoy.

So it’s funny that it was borrowed twice out of Italian, once into English and once into Latin American Spanish.

So they use it in Argentina in what’s called Lomfardo, a slangy kind of Spanish, heavily influenced by Italian.

That is really cool to hear, though.

Right? Isn’t it interesting?

Because I never hear it here in Florida, so I never hear it here.

I’ve only ever heard it from my mother.

Yeah, so you’ve got these memories and associations attached.

Well, hang on to that.

Well, I pass it on because I tell my children, quit being such a sketch.

That’s how it works, right?

That’s how it works.

We’re going to get a call in 20 years from your kids going, what did my mom mean?

That is awesome.

Well, I greatly appreciate you guys letting me know.

All right.

Take care now.

You too.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye, Ruth.

Bye-bye.

Well, don’t be a scooch.

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