Talk:Skookum

Sources

This article smells like bullshit to me. I've lived in the Portland area for twenty years and I have never once heard this used. Can anyone find a citation for its "general use"? unless (talk) 08:00, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Purely anecdotal, but growing up in the Puget Sound region, I knew older folks who used this to mean "securely attached" or "well fitted". I suspect it was once in more general usage throughout the PNW. A google search suggests it might still be in active use in BC. walkie (talk) 10:22, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Growing up in BC, I heard this word used quite a bit, never in Vancouver, but among blue-collar forestry-types. My dad or grampa would typically use it to mean neat, useful or powerful, especially in relation to size, as in "I just got a Skookum little electric fishing motor for my boat. It's quiet but it really goes. Vroom-vroom." (Vroom is also a pacific-northwest word-- used to evoke the noise made by a motor or engine.)Stevecudmore (talk) 16:35, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Also growing up in BC, I have often heard the word used in reference to objects which are well made, or well suited to their purpose, as in "that's a Skookum jig you got there".

I am unlikely to have time to work on this page much, but here's a few of possibly useful sources, I think all reliable:

• Eric Partridge (2006). The new Partridge dictionary of slang and unconventional English: J-Z. Taylor & Francis. p. 1768. ISBN 978-0-415-25938-5. Retrieved 27 March 2013. (says the term is still in active use in BC)
• Allan A. Metcalf (2000). How We Talk: American Regional English Today. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 146. ISBN 978-0-618-04362-0. Retrieved 27 March 2013.
• William Bright (2004). Native American Placenames of the United States. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 452. ISBN 978-0-8061-3598-4. Retrieved 27 March 2013.

Although I'm probably not going to work on the page anytime soon I'm going to remove the PROD deletion tag. Pfly (talk) 01:21, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

How exactly do these sources allow us to write more than a dictionary definition? I don't see it. Huon (talk) 01:25, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Your inline edit comment "how can a tool manufacturer be a valid cite for linguistics" sums up how off-base the opposition to this article and the Tools cite is out of touch with this word being a cultural phenomenon; this isn't a linguistics article. The article is about a popular word and its varying meanings, including the usage for a sasquatch-like beasty and the widely-marketed Skookum Doll and it's the basis for the word Skookumchuck......which is also not a linguistics article but about a thing. This article, too, involves things (the monster, the dolls) and so the word has to be defined/explained. The point with the tools cite is it's not a cite from a book about native culture/language, this is a word that's current in non-native life and has a history and identification wth this region; your attempt to get it deleted was way out of line.Skookum1 (talk) 02:16, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

There is a mention in the article of how an alternate pronunciation differs from the norm, but the "normal" pronunciation is not actually given. How do we pronounce this word? - Anonymous 02:14:54 15 Oct 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:243:1400:310:25D9:EC88:7553:E36F (talk)

Ernest Thompson Setton uses the word Skookum [chuck] in his novel Rolf in the Woods, with a footnote that it means "Troubled waters".TAPwiki (talk) 18:30, 2 February 2026 (UTC)