cooch, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

cooch n.

also cootch, cutchie

[abbr./euph. for cunt n. (1); note Online Dict. Playground Slang (2001): ‘This word raises all sorts of interesting possibilities since the old Welsh word “cwtch” (which has a similar pronunciation) is often used to mean a “place of comfort”. It makes me wonder if the word was carried to the States by Welsh immigrants then mutated and adopted by peoples who would have no idea of its origins’]

1. (US) a ‘hootchy-kootchy’ dance, i.e. belly-dancing; thus cooch artiste/dancer, coocher, a belly dancer (cf. kootch n. (1)).

1903		implied in cooch show
1910		in Variety 10 Sept. 20: Her ‘cooch’ [...] is also suggestive.
1930		Variety 3 Sept. 77/3: Sheriffs refuse to stand for cooch dancers [DA].
1933		(con. 1890s) H. Asbury Barbary Coast 132: Some of the most noted cooch artistes of the day appeared at the Midway Plaisance, among them [...] the original Little Egypt, who first danced in San Francisco in 1897, a few years after her triumphs in the Streets of Cairo show at the first Chicago World’s Fair.
1937		‘Boxcar Bertha’ Sister of the Road (1975) 224: Goldie [...] offered to marry her to break up her affair with Polly the cootch dancer.
1940		C. Rawson Headless Lady (1987) 33: One of the grass-skirted cooch dancers was knitting busily at a small pink sweater.
1953		W. Hopson ‘The Ice Man Came’ in Thrilling Detective Winter 🌐 He was making things a little rough for Leota, our prettiest cooch dancer.
1960		(con. 1930s) R. Barber Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968) 295: Sumner essayed to describe Fifi’s cooch and got all tangled up in a gnarl of rhetoric [...] ‘You know, Your Honour. Movements that suggest . . ’.
1968		(con. late 19C) S. Longstreet Wilder Shore 137: The Plaisance in its reinterpretations exposed the best of the coochers. Little Egypt showed her smooth round belly there.
1972		R.A. Wilson Playboy’s Book of Forbidden Words.

2. (US) the vagina; thus, by metonymy, a woman.

1966		Trimble 5000 Adult Sex Words and Phrases.
1967		Current Sl. II:2 9: Cooch, n. A desirable girl.
1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 54: cooch 1. [...] any woman. ‘I was twenty-four before I knew that a Bloody Mary wasn’t a cooch in her period.’.
1997		(con. 1960s) A. Frewin London Blues 157: I’ve only got to sniff some white cooch, governor, and I’m there.
2000		R. Antoni Grandmother’s Erotic Folktales 109: A half-naked soldier chasing a baby baboo [...] waving a Franklin in the air behind him calling cutchie-cutchie-cutchie!
2000		in W. Shaw Westsiders 382: Cooch screamin’ / Meat cleanin’ / Creamin’ / Tag teamin’.
2006		at www.incestquest.com 🌐 [cartoon caption] All I know is that my cootch was getting kinda sore.
2017		D. Winslow The Force [ebook] Giving up her over-valued cooch for an extra spoonful of peanut butter.

3. (US gay) an effeminate homosexual male.

1972

B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 72: stereotype effeminate homosexual [...] cooch.

In compounds

cooch show (n.)

(US) a carnival sideshow featuring suggestive dancing.

1903		St Louis Post-Dispatch (MO) 16 Oct. 2/5: ‘One day I was told that I would have join the cooch show. I put my foot down and said i would not’.
1919		Eve. Times-Republican (Marshalltown, IA) 5 Aug. 9/2: Shows Apparently Clean [...] The customary ‘cooch’ show, ‘Maid of the Mist,’ [...] and the union-suited ‘poses p[l]astique’ were absent.
1921		in Variety 18 Feb. 11: The ‘cooch’ dance under its latest name of ‘shimmy.’.
1928		Tampa Trib. (FL) 3 Sept. 4/4: Tia Juana [...] is a glorified strip of the old Barbary Coast in hell-roaring days. Everything is here from the 25-cent tent cooch show to the $1000 [...] spin of the roulette wheel.
1933		Hecht & Fowler Great Magoo 12: Me dancing myself blue in the face in this lousy cooch show.
1949		F. Brown Dead Ringer 21: Your cooch shows would be strips.
1963		A.S. Fleischman Venetian Blonde (2006) 189: Keep your figure [...] If she blows wise [...] you can always go back to the cootch shows.
2012		W. Keyser ‘Carny Lingo’ in http://goodmagic.com 🌐 Cootch Show — A raunchy girl show.