What Does 'Zhuzh' Mean (and Why Is It So Hard to Spell)?

I was thinking about the consonant sound /ʒ/ recently. You know, it’s the sound that begins the final syllable in words such as “vision,” “fusion,” and “measure.” We also have it in words such as "usual” or “casual.” 

But English doesn’t like using this sound at the ends of words. I can think of a few, like “garage,” “mirage,” and “prestige.” Then we start getting into words that are used less frequently, such as “beige” (that tannish color), “rouge” (a kind of reddish makeup for your cheeks), “luge” (the winter Olympic sport), and “loge” (a special section of seats in a theater). There may be a few more, but they’re hard to bring to mind. And even the fairly familiar ones like “garage” sometimes end up with a more familiar “J” sound at the end. In the US Midwest, for example, “garage” is sometimes pronounced more like “grodge.”

The 'zh' sound is rare in English.

As for /ʒ/ at the beginnings of words, you might as well forget about it. There are some French names, such as Jacques (/ʒɑk/) and Jean (/ʒɑ̃n/), which Star Trek fans recognize in the name Jean-Luc Picard, and which fans of “Les Misérables” recognize in the name Jean Valjean. Then there’s the Russian name Zhivago, which I’ve only ever heard in the book and movie title “Doctor Zhivago.”

So I was surprised to learn about an English word that has the sound /ʒ/ not once, but twice, at the beginning and the end! The word is “zhuzh,” and the first place I heard it was in an episode of the podcast “A Way with Words.” A caller had been confused when his girlfriend saw him adjusting his hair and said he was “zhuzhing” it. The hosts Grant Barrett and Martha Barnett told him that this word goes back to the 1960s, and that it “seems to have arisen from secret lingo popular in parts of the gay community in the United Kingdom” at that time. They also mentioned a possible origin in the Romany word "zhouzho," which means to tidy something up. 

The Oxford English Dictionary gives a similar definition, with an earliest citation from 1977. It’s also in the Cambridge Dictionary, defined as “to make something more interesting or attractive by changing it slightly or adding something to it.” There’s also...

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