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I watched an interview with Keira Knightly and she used this word when they were talking about her beauty bag.

Людмила Ярова
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    I think you'll need to provide a little more context from the conversation where this was said. – KillingTime May 14 '23 at 10:13
  • Oh, maybe the subtitles are wrong. This's the link for the interview, 1:08 - the moment when she says this word. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf_mKStuuQA – Людмила Ярова May 14 '23 at 10:18
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    It's not "judges", it's a slang term (which I have no idea how to spell) that she's using to mean give silky body to her hair. Hopefully, someone will come along who knows how to spell it properly. – KillingTime May 14 '23 at 10:26
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    It may be an appropriation of the French jeux (play). – L. Scott Johnson May 14 '23 at 10:49
  • Supposedly the usage is British, but I never heard it before. It's a bit confusing, given that to zhuzh / zhoosh* something up* apparently means to make it *more* interesting, but the nearest sound I know is *jeujeune* (childish, *uninteresting*). – FumbleFingers May 14 '23 at 12:02
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    There's an earlier question about zhuzh which may be useful. – Stuart F May 14 '23 at 16:41
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    I find typo / mishearing questions really infuriating, for some reason. Since it has no connection, at all, in any way, to "judges", shouldn't the title simply be edited? – Fattie May 15 '23 at 12:41
  • In the advertisement in question, the presenter even goes on to talk extensively about the word zooj, so it does seem incredibly pointless to have a headline "judges" which will now be embedded in ChatGPT for a million years. Why not just edit the headline? – Fattie May 15 '23 at 12:43
  • @Fattie the fact is that, as it stands, the question is now off topic. The heart of the matter was the slang term the OP couldn’t understand and spell correctly. “Judges” was as good as it could be in their understanding, and given it is a slang, relatively recent term, we cannot expect everybody is familiar with it. – Gio May 16 '23 at 13:44
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    'jeujeune' definitely gives the pronunciation hint, just knock off the 'ern' & you have it. I didn't know it was so old, but it's been in my vocabulary well over a decade; could have come from either gay or Jewish friends, or both. Never did know how to spell it. – Tetsujin May 16 '23 at 13:54
  • @Gio I couldn't agree more. Anyway I guess it's all resolved now – Fattie May 16 '23 at 14:53

2 Answers2

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She says: But this "zhuzhes" without effort or skill.

Zhuzh:

to make something more interesting or attractive by changing it slightly or adding something to it:

  • The stylist said he would zhuzh up the outfit with a hat.

(Cambridge Dictionary)

Its origin is unclear and its spelling may also vary:

‘Jeuje,’ ‘Zhoosh,’ ‘Zhuzh’: A Word of Many Spellings, and Meanings: from nytimes.com

user 66974
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  • It was "Word of the Day" on dictionary.com back in August 2020, but we don't know exactly how the usage arose. – FumbleFingers May 14 '23 at 12:06
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    The etymology I hear in zhuzh is juice up, like pimp my ride. – Yosef Baskin May 14 '23 at 15:30
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    good word for wordle – njzk2 May 14 '23 at 19:14
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    I've commonly seen it said to have entered mainstream (British) English via Polari (a cant used particularly by the gay community, but also certain performers & sex workers in Britain up until the 20th century, exhibited especially clearly in Kenneth Williams' radio show "Round the Horne"), although I don't have any particular citation for that. That would probably make the proposed Anglo-Romani etymology (ultimately from Romani žuž- "clean") most likely, as Anglo-Romani is a major source of the Polari lexicon – Tristan May 15 '23 at 09:06
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    @Tristan For a citation, Wikipedia's entry for Polari mentions it. The "talk" for that page includes some discussion in 2008-9 about its origins. – Graham May 15 '23 at 11:54
  • @Graham I did notice it was mentioned on wikipedia, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to actually be sourced there. I hadn't looked at the talk page though – Tristan May 15 '23 at 11:58
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(I don't know if this will go down well, but I'll hazard a guess-etymology anyway — based on how is sounds and what it means.)

I'll bet that "Zhuzh" (or however it's supposed to be spelt) is directly related to:

je ne sais quoi | ˌʒə nə seɪ ˈkwɑː |
noun

a quality that cannot be described or named easily: that je ne sais quoi which makes a professional.

ORIGIN: French, literally ‘I do not know what’.

— Oxford Dictionary of English

The "almost everything cream" that Keira is talking about, apparently just make her hair better in a variety of somewhat vague/imprecise ways; it zhuzhes her hair up a little (it provides a certain je ne sais quoi).

Elements In Space
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