Thank you! I forwarded your answer to my sister, and she was very happy (as was I).
Just wanted to add: I remembered the ADS-L some time after I sent out this question, and tried searching there. Obviously, I can’t tell the plausibility of the suggested explanations as well as you can, so I trust you saying that the ‘pooch dog = pocket dog’ explanation is the most plausible one, but one of the explanations that seemed quite interesting to me was the suggestion it might have come from the word ‘poonch’ in one of the Hindi languages meaning ‘tail’, which was accompanied by a claim that ‘Poonch’ was a common name for dogs in India. I have no way of checking the veracity of this claim, though – and I don’t even remember what dialect was mentioned, so not sure if I could even find the ‘poonch=tail’ thing anywhere. Have you seen this explanation? What do you think about it?
Betsy:
December 10th, 2012 at 5:10 pm
I have a possible explanation. The word for puppy in Italian is cucciolo, the pronunciation being cooch-oh-lo, accent on the first syllable. So the “cooch” rhymes with pooch. Now in some of the Italian dialects, they will sometimes truncate a word, and it’s very possible that some (or with usage) might have called a puppy a cooch, or at least cooch-a. Is it possible that this morphed into pooch somehow? The timing of it is right. By 1924 there would have been a lot of Italians having immigrated into the US. I’ll betcha that’s what happened.
What do you think?
John Rudmin:
January 6th, 2013 at 10:18 pm
Could it be from Hopi for dog = Pooko?
Linda Nutter:
May 7th, 2014 at 11:41 am
When in Mexico with our dog Cooper who is 3/4 Poodle, he is often called a “peluche” which is Spanish for plush toy and since it sounds a lot like “pooch,” I’ve wondered if this could be the origin of the word.
alan price:
May 9th, 2014 at 6:37 pm
My wife speaks English as a second language and uses “pooch” in what is apparently the archaic fashion, meaning “to protrude”. When I saw that definition I immediately thought of a dog with its tongue hanging out. So maybe a pooch is an animal that has a habit of pooching out its tongue.
Yustina ID:
July 21st, 2019 at 3:49 pm
Pooch=sporran=a small bag worn around the waist so as to hang in front of the kilt as part of men’s Scottish Highland dress. There’s a poem in Scotland. “Hurley,hurley,round the table,
Eat as muckle as ye’re able.
Eat muckle, pooch nane,
Hurley, hurley, Amen.” It means, put the food in your belly, not in your bag :)
Alan Zulch:
June 20th, 2020 at 3:02 am
The origin of poochie is from Japan. Prior to the Meiji Period dogs were communally owned and called by color: black, white, or mixed. The word for mixed was “botchi”. When the English came to Yokohama the foreigners complained about the barking dogs and the government responded by requiring collars and individual names for dogs. Around the turn of the century individual ownership of dogs as pets became fashionable. When an Englishman was walking his dog, named Patches, a Nihonjin couldn’t understand the name and called it by its color, botchi. The owner assumed he meant to say Patches, but couldn’t pronounce it properly. They settled on the difference, Poochie, which subsequently stuck and later was exported to English-speaking countries as poochie or pooch in the early 20th Century. This came from a Japanese TV show called Chikochan No Shikarareru.
Bill Martin:
August 17th, 2020 at 1:27 pm
Someone said that they had no idea what an Ipad was good for. I can answer that question. I had an Ipad once. I didn’t care for it because of several problems inherent in Ipads. It finally quit working and I took it to the gun range…..it worked quite well there………as a target!
Dixie:
May 22nd, 2021 at 5:36 pm
That sounds like the opinion of a die-hard PC fan. Personally, I love iPad, as I have an iPad Mini that I wouldn’t be without.
Lynn:
September 18th, 2021 at 2:51 pm
Since you wrote this, they have found Amelia Earhart.
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Yael:
March 22nd, 2011 at 7:43 am
Thank you! I forwarded your answer to my sister, and she was very happy (as was I).
Just wanted to add: I remembered the ADS-L some time after I sent out this question, and tried searching there. Obviously, I can’t tell the plausibility of the suggested explanations as well as you can, so I trust you saying that the ‘pooch dog = pocket dog’ explanation is the most plausible one, but one of the explanations that seemed quite interesting to me was the suggestion it might have come from the word ‘poonch’ in one of the Hindi languages meaning ‘tail’, which was accompanied by a claim that ‘Poonch’ was a common name for dogs in India. I have no way of checking the veracity of this claim, though – and I don’t even remember what dialect was mentioned, so not sure if I could even find the ‘poonch=tail’ thing anywhere. Have you seen this explanation? What do you think about it?
Betsy:
December 10th, 2012 at 5:10 pm
I have a possible explanation. The word for puppy in Italian is cucciolo, the pronunciation being cooch-oh-lo, accent on the first syllable. So the “cooch” rhymes with pooch. Now in some of the Italian dialects, they will sometimes truncate a word, and it’s very possible that some (or with usage) might have called a puppy a cooch, or at least cooch-a. Is it possible that this morphed into pooch somehow? The timing of it is right. By 1924 there would have been a lot of Italians having immigrated into the US. I’ll betcha that’s what happened.
What do you think?
John Rudmin:
January 6th, 2013 at 10:18 pm
Could it be from Hopi for dog = Pooko?
Linda Nutter:
May 7th, 2014 at 11:41 am
When in Mexico with our dog Cooper who is 3/4 Poodle, he is often called a “peluche” which is Spanish for plush toy and since it sounds a lot like “pooch,” I’ve wondered if this could be the origin of the word.
alan price:
May 9th, 2014 at 6:37 pm
My wife speaks English as a second language and uses “pooch” in what is apparently the archaic fashion, meaning “to protrude”. When I saw that definition I immediately thought of a dog with its tongue hanging out. So maybe a pooch is an animal that has a habit of pooching out its tongue.
Yustina ID:
July 21st, 2019 at 3:49 pm
Pooch=sporran=a small bag worn around the waist so as to hang in front of the kilt as part of men’s Scottish Highland dress. There’s a poem in Scotland. “Hurley,hurley,round the table,
Eat as muckle as ye’re able.
Eat muckle, pooch nane,
Hurley, hurley, Amen.” It means, put the food in your belly, not in your bag :)
Alan Zulch:
June 20th, 2020 at 3:02 am
The origin of poochie is from Japan. Prior to the Meiji Period dogs were communally owned and called by color: black, white, or mixed. The word for mixed was “botchi”. When the English came to Yokohama the foreigners complained about the barking dogs and the government responded by requiring collars and individual names for dogs. Around the turn of the century individual ownership of dogs as pets became fashionable. When an Englishman was walking his dog, named Patches, a Nihonjin couldn’t understand the name and called it by its color, botchi. The owner assumed he meant to say Patches, but couldn’t pronounce it properly. They settled on the difference, Poochie, which subsequently stuck and later was exported to English-speaking countries as poochie or pooch in the early 20th Century. This came from a Japanese TV show called Chikochan No Shikarareru.
Bill Martin:
August 17th, 2020 at 1:27 pm
Someone said that they had no idea what an Ipad was good for. I can answer that question. I had an Ipad once. I didn’t care for it because of several problems inherent in Ipads. It finally quit working and I took it to the gun range…..it worked quite well there………as a target!
Dixie:
May 22nd, 2021 at 5:36 pm
That sounds like the opinion of a die-hard PC fan. Personally, I love iPad, as I have an iPad Mini that I wouldn’t be without.
Lynn:
September 18th, 2021 at 2:51 pm
Since you wrote this, they have found Amelia Earhart.