Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also cooshie, cootchie, kooshy) soft, comfortable, easy.

1888		Kipling ‘The Three Musketeers’ in Plain Tales from the Hills 66: The chooper you choops an’ the jildier you chels the better kooshy will that Sahib be.
1912		E. Pugh City Of The World 58: A lot of them have rare cushy jobs.
1917		‘Ian Hay’ Carrying On 38: ‘Cooshie’ is the least word here. That and ‘crump.’.
1918		Darewski & Wimperis [perf. Vesta Tilley] A Bit of a Blighty One 🎵 I’m having a cootchie time but nothing to speak of. / I’m treated like a long-lost son .
1918		Aussie (France) 8 Oct. 16/1: ‘I’ve got a cushy job, have I!’ snapped the Postal Orderly at the Battalion’s champion lead-swinger.
1918		F. Dunham diary 3 July Long Carry (1970) 190: This period was one of the ‘cushiest’ times we had.
1925		S. O’Casey Juno and the Paycock Act I: This job’ll last for some time too, Captain, an’ [...] it’ll be cushy enough.
1929		(con. 1916) F. Manning Her Privates We (1986) 20: Them bloody chaps ’ave a cushy job.
1932		(con. WWI) L. Mann Flesh in Armour 128: They kept asking [...] how it was that they camr to have been in these cushy billets.
1936		J. Curtis Gilt Kid 97: I got the gaff weighed up. I’m entitled to have it a bit more cushy than you.
1941		G. Kersh They Die with Their Boots Clean 34: Sergeant Tug, who [...] looks upon the awful discipline of the peace-time Brigade of Guards as ‘cushy’.
1947		B. Schulberg Harder They Fall (1971) 154: My job with Nick was like a jail, a comfortable, cushy jail.
1955		B. Schulberg On the Waterfront (1964) 209: No more cushy jobs in the loft.
1958		C. Lee diary 1 Nov. in Eight Bells & Top Masts (2001) 167: The houseboys reckon they’ve got a cushy number.
1960		J.R. Ackerley We Think The World Of You (1971) 129: That’s all right. I know ’im. ’E’s cushy.
1973		B.S. Johnson All Bull 85: It was because I was a National Service officer that I was shunted out of this cushy post.
1978		A. Burgess 1985 (1980) 217: The human staff had it cushy.
1987		Beano Comic Library No. 124 4: What a cushy life!
1990		R.G. Barratt ‘Aunty’s Aces’ in What Do You Reckon (1997) [ebook] [They] have a penchant for burrowing their way into cushy little jobs in the public service.
1997		D. Farson Never a Normal Man 161: It became plain that the ‘cushy’ job I had been offered meant that I was neither crew nor passenger.
2000		Sun (London) 23 Mar. 8: If he has any honour, Lever will resign from his cushy job now.
2005		M.B. ‘Chopper’ Read Chopper 4 148: Most of them are looking for the cushy life in witness protection.
2012		(con. 1980s) I. Welsh Skagboys 37: Our insubordination [...], at the cushy number in the pub, has been punished.
2012		(con. 1943) G.S. Manson Coorparoo Blues [ebook] ‘Didn’t you have some cushy number well away from the whizzbangs?’.
2014		Pando Qly Spring 53/2: He’s still got his cushy job.
2015		T. Pluck ‘Big Snip’ in Life During Wartime (2018) 19: [S]he showed no inclination to abandon van duty for a cushier gig.
2020		S.A. Crosby Blacktop Wasteland 135: He had a cushy job in the prison laundry.
2024		J. Meades Empty Wigs (t/s) 623: [A] life of sated leisure and cushy sloth.

2. (US) of a person, soft-bodied.

1977

L. Heinemann Close Quarters (1987) 13: He was one of those fat, sloppy, cushy dudes.