I was cruising the net and saw an article titled Time magazine defuses CIA stoush. Sure, the story is interesting but… what the hell does ‘stoush’ mean?
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urbandictionary.com says it’s a fight or a beating. I don’t see how it applies to this article though, the process went through all the courts.
Punch-up, wild brawl. Sometimes also used as “verbal stoush”
Widely used in Australia and NZ so it’s probably UK in origin.
Perhaps related to “stushie”, I think of Scots origin, meaning row or argument. Cf “stramash”.
Try Google and thus:
http://www.anu.edu.au/andc/res/aehist/wwi/S.php
OT, but of interest(Link):
A decision by the United States to indefinitely retain oversight of the main computers that control Internet traffic drew concerns Friday from foreign officials, many of whom want an international body in charge instead.
Some countries have pressed to move oversight to an international body, such as the U.N. International Telecommunication Union, although the U.S. government has historically had that role because it funded much of the Internet’s early development.
*shudder*
John
There’s quite a bit out on UN plans to control the internet. Try googling ‘UN’, ‘internet’ and ‘control’.
I looked at Perry’s post and wondered what the point of it was, as obviously “stoush” is a perfectly ordinary and common word meaning a fight or disagreement of some kind.
And then I looked it up and found that the word is an Australianism, and doesn’t seem to be used anywhere else other than perhaps NZ.
And that is one peculiar thing about being an expat. Generally one has no idea which words are regionalisms from where you come from, and which are more general English language words until you use a word and haver everybody around you look at you blankly.
Too true. For a second I thought Perry was being picky over ‘stoush’ being misspelled – looked again – nope, seems right to me…
Strine is a richly idiomatic variant of the mother tongue.
Michael Quinion is a Briton who runs the worldwidewords.com site for “International English” usage. He doesn’t list stoush.
I said, Lord take me downtown,
I’m just looking for some stoush…
I did my usual “define stoush” google trick, which will often pop up a definition before the results. No such luck, and the first page of results were “WTF does ‘stoush’ mean?” from zdnet.com.au and uses of the word without definition.
Bloody Poms, can’t even speak the Queen’s English…
c.f South African English “stouse” – now uncommon, but current up to the ’60s
From [i]Snatch[/i]:
“Blagged? [i]Blagged?[/i] What the fuck does that mean? You Brits are supposed to have invented the Queen’s fucking English, and I haven’t heard a word of it yet.”
It’s definitely from the Scot’s term “stoushie” or “stushie”
Meaning – flustered, upset,
To “cause a bit of a stoush” would mean to trigger off a disturbance with a large flavour of fluster or panic
Just had another thought … wouldn’t it be great if Time magazine and the rest of the world’s media started using more Scot’s words or words with local flavour in their headlines?
How about “G8 in a fankle over trade issue ?
Just used in a newspaper headline today in NZ:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=4&ObjectID=10333982
We Brits invented the Queen’s English. How we speak it is by definition correct! Keep up, colonials!