Rutching

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Claire.

Hi, Claire. Where are you calling from?

From Dallas, Texas.

All right. What can we do for you?

Well, I have a word that I’m interested in finding information about.

When my first child was a newborn, if he squirmed or wiggled either in his crib or in our arms, my in-laws would say he was ritching.

And I had never heard that word before, but we adopted it.

It’s actually a very useful word.

Don’t tell me. Let me guess.

Maybe your in-laws were from, I don’t know, Pennsylvania, someplace like that?

You got it from York, York, Pennsylvania.

From York, Pennsylvania. Okay.

And they probably have a Germanic last name.

Stein.

Okay.

The reason that we know these things is because this word tends to appear in places that were settled by Germans because it is originally from German.

And there are a variety of forms of this, but generally they all mean either slipping and sliding or scooting around or even just disturbing something.

And we have ruts and roots and rooch and rooch and all these different ways of saying it as well.

As it was borrowed into English, it was borrowed multiple times in multiple ways.

They also referred my second son wiggled and scooted, as you said, a lot more than the first, and they said he was a roacher.

Yeah.

Roacher, yeah, yeah.

Use it as a noun as well.

In part of the country, the word is transformed a little more, so now it would mean to rummage around or to root around in something.

Probably also influenced a little bit by the sound of it, it sounds a little bit like root or root.

Yes, very interesting.

Very interesting.

Well, thank you so much.

Yeah, our pleasure.

Thanks for calling.

Okay, I appreciate it and love your show.

All right, bye-bye.

Great.

Bye, Claire.

Bye-bye.

Yeah, the original has to do with sliding.

And in German-speaking countries, if you want to wish someone a happy New Year, you do that.

And then you wish them einen guten Lutsch, which is a good slide.

Have a good slide into the New Year.

Isn’t that great?

I love that.

I’m going to borrow that in English.

So if you’re in the arts at Pennsylvania, another form of the word, ruch, is ruchy, which is a sledding place.

Oh, okay.

Or a sledding place.

Yeah, that would make perfect sense.

So I’m going to go out to the ruchy and go down.

And retch around.

And retch around.

Call us with your language questions, 877-929-9673.