Claire heard someone use the word smidgen the other day and remarked that it was a term you don’t hear much anymore. I guess I agree, and in this digital age of exactness, it probably makes sense. It seems like today everyone has to be precise in their measurements — everything from time to various other measurements. Traffic signs even tell you exactly how far you are from some place, and how long before you’ll get there. So with our GPSs telling us exactly how long it will take to get somewhere, it’s no wonder smidgen doesn’t get a lot of use. Smidgen is a little bit of something — hardly precision enough for today’s world.
Another word you don’t hear used often is skosh — a skosh is a hair less than a smidgen! I can see why that word doesn’t get much use either. Actually, according the dictionary a skosh is a small amount: bit, smidgen.
I don’t know that I ever used smidgen too much, but I used to use the term skosh all the time when in the Far East, especially Japan and Korea.
I did some checking and during the occupation of Japan at the end of World War II, US forces borrowed some vocabulary from the Japanese. One word was sukoshi, meaning “little” or “few.” It was used to describe quantities, time or distances. Apparently the Americans dropped the u and i, yielding skosh.
So even though smidgen and skosh don’t provide the precision we need in today’s world, they’re still fun to say even though a lot of the younger generation don’t know what we’re talking about…..
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