Skooshy cream
May 24th 2025
This Scots term for what is known elsewhere in the UK as squirty cream or spray cream first came to the attention of the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) in 1992 when an Edinburgh resident supplied a shopping list containing “skooshy cream, biscuits, crisps”. Another early example came from the New Writing Scotland anthology in 2002: “I’m smiling like the cat that’s got the skooshy cream”.
The term has well and truly taken off in the twenty-first century. In February 2005, it appeared in the Sunday Herald in a rather cynical view of Valentine’s Day celebrations: “Do people actually sit around on beds strewn with rose petals drinking delicate flutes of champagne on Valentine’s Day?… Do they go down to Tesco and buy up honey, chocolate, skooshy cream and strawberries to boost their silk-scarves-and-handcuff routine?”.
In August 2015, the science behind the spray was explained in The Herald: “In the drag racing industry, it [nitrous oxide] is used as propellant to turbo-charge vehicles and, more mundanely, it is the reason ‘skooshy’ cream sprays from canisters already whipped”.
Returning to The Herald one last time, a January 2019 advice column noted the term’s (lack of) familiarity: “I overheard this gem in a Glasgow café last week at lunchtime, ‘Do you want ice-cream or skooshy cream with your apple tart?’ The question did not raise an eyebrow. Of course it shouldn’t … A word that makes perfect sense to locals but would leave any visitor to the city struggling”. We’ll see how long it takes everyone else to catch on.
Dictionaries of the Scots Language would like to thank Bob Dewar for illustrating our Scots Word of the Week feature.
