• louche •
Printable Version Pronunciation: loosh • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: Questionable, 'fishy', not straightforward, suspicious—even disreputable in some contexts.
Notes: Today's word entered English so recently (the 1810s), that it has hardly had time to procreate: there are no related derivative words.
In Play: This Good Word comes in handy when you want to avoid the slangy term fishy: "There is something louche about the way he stared at my diamond pendant when we were dancing." It has world-wide applications: "Everyone feels that most of the Western-style discos in the new Moscow are a bit louche."
Word History: In French, today's Good Word means "cross-eyed" or "fishy, suspicious". Not much has changed since English shanghaied it. The French word derives from Latin luscus "one-eyed", whose origin is itself a bit louche. It resembles lux (luk-s) "light", which makes it faintly related semantically to luscus. Did this word at one time meaning "blinding" or "partially blind"? That would make sense but we have no reliable evidence that it ever had either of these senses. (It would be a bit louche of us to ignore the contribution of Lynne Flake, who suggested we look into today's Good Word.)
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