As in, a word signifying 'a little' – used in common vernacular in England, and possibly elsewhere.
Learn English – Where does the word smidgen come from
etymology
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One definition of 'tuck' from The Free Dictionary relates this word to food, which I'm sure we've all heard before:
tuck away/into Informal:
To consume (food) heartily.
Though not definitive, there are two excerpts from Wikipedia worth considering...
Regarding the origin of 'tuck' in relation to shops:
The term "tuck", meaning food, is slang and probably originates from such phrases as "to tuck into a meal". It is also closely related to the Australian English word "tucker", also meaning food.
And, regarding the origin of 'tuck', in itself:
"Tucker" may originate with the lacework at the top of Nineteenth Century women's dresses, but the origin of its use in regard to food probably arises from the popular shops run in England by various members of the Tuck family between at least 1780 and 1850. The earliest reference found is to one Thomas Tuck whose famous "Tuck's Coffee House" in the university city of Norwich in Norfolk UK attracted many academics.
WWW
It's listed in the Dictionary of New Terms, "Compiled by students in the History of the English Language classes taught at Hope College by Prof. Curtis Gruenler, 1997-2004."
shibby adj (etc.). Used to indicate that something is “cool.”: It also appears to be a word that, as of yet, has no apparent meaning, and can be used for virtually anything. Somehow it seems shabby to shibby’s users that shibby does not have shibby meaning or strictly defined word class. “Your car is shabby. Have you ever gone shibbying in it? It would be shabby.” First used in the movie Dude, Where’s My Car?, and usually only uttered by its true devotees.
This seems likely. Urban Dictionary was founded in 1999. Dude, Where's My Car? is from 2000, and the first Urban Dictionary definition is from 2003. So this suggests the slang word didn't predate the film.
Usenet
Usenet dates back to 1981.
The earliest Usenet mention is an August 12, 1992 post in alt.drugs entitled "Robo DM", about the cough medicine Robitussin. The post begins:
Have you folks tried this stuff?
I did it for the first time about four years ago and have done it 5 or 6 times since.
That is some coool shibby! Me and my best friend sat in a dorm room for three hours after drinking a small (8 oz?) bottle each. Well, maybe sat isn't the right word. We spent most of that time upside down (on our heads, hanging from a bunk bed, etc.) laughing, saying "It's all about chickens!" Incredible. Pure silly fun. No unpleasant after affects. I've heard it compares to opium in its physical effects, but what do I know.
But that's the only one using the term in that way.
In 1997, Shibby was used by members of alt.tv.x-files as a nickname for John Shiban, who was a writer and producer of The X-Files. And it was also a nickname for a rockabilly guitarist.
After the film came out on December 15, 2000, we start to see it used on Usenet. For example:
alt.fan.hanson, Dec 16, 2000, "Dude, where's my car? -ot":
that was so funny! hahaha. it was a stupid movie, but it was really funny! shibby! hehe.
alt.gossip.celebrities, Dec 17, 2000, "Anyone see "Dude, Where's my Car?" yet?":
and I can just hear it- come monday, the majority of my school will be using the term 'shibby'... great!
alt.drugs.pot, Dec 25, 2000, "Christmas!":
The cat is because I've been wanting a cat of my own for a while. [...] I've been thinking of naming her "Shibby".
But of most interest is this December 13, 2000 post by Nikwax in misc.writing.screenplays:
John, I hate to have to tell you that "Dude, Where's My Car" was one of the funniest spec scripts in the last few years. [...]
Like I said, I haven't seen the flick, but I think it's a shame if they cut out the pot smoking references. These were among the funniest and they really empowered the central premise and title. They called pot "shibby." E.g. "Dude, that was the shibbiest shibby that I've ever shibbied."
WWW
Skipping back over to the world wide web, @@roñ'§ p@gê© has a definition and etymology of shibby, which I'll quote in full:
Shibby
A positive modern multipurpose slang word used increasingly to replace other words. adj. 1: positive, pleasing or successful; "That was a shibby concert" [syn: nice] 2: one word positive response; TERRY: "Want to go with me to the Tori Amos concert tonight?" ERIC: "Shibby!" [syn: cool]
v. 1: to understand or to elicit understanding; "Let me know when you're done. Shibby?" [syn: understand] 2: to engage in sexual intercourse; "I am going to shibby your brains out" [syn: ****] 3: to play or to waste time; "Maybe we should cut down on the shibbying and get back to work" [syn: ****ing around]
n. 1: nickname for a lover; "How is my Shibby doing tonight?" [syn: baby, sweety, honey, ...] 2: a fun replacement for any noun; "Hello I am not home. Please leave your shibby after the shibby."
Etymology
Introduced in the 2001 movie entitled "DUDE, WHERE'S MY CAR", the word "shibby" is used numerous times as slang replacement for adjectives, verbs, nouns, proper names... Ashton Kutchner who portrays Jesse in the film had this to say when asked about the actual meaning of the word:
KUTCHNER: "I think it comes from Phil Stark's hypothetical world. Originally in the movie, Shibby was to mean marijuana, ganja, pot, weed...just another wonderful name for it. When the studio decided to change the movie to PG-13 the drugs got taken out, and it became just another word for "cool." It was a responsible decision on the studio's behalf. We don't really want to advertise illegal substances to children...like we do on our show (That '70s Show). (laughs)"
This is from an interview with the film's actors Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott published by IGN Movies on December 14, 2000. It continues:
SCOTT: The movie doesn't really need it, I think the movie's fine without it.
KUTCHNER: Well, PG-13, you know 13 year-olds can't watch TV, so what we do on our show is totally different. (laughs) Basically, now "shibby" means "cool." Like, we were "shibbying" last night, or you were "shibbed" up. "What time is it?" It's about shib-o'clock!" It can also be a noun. If you don't know what something is, it's a "shibby."
The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English form 2007 gives two definitions of shibby:
shibby noun a man who does housework UK: SCOTLAND, 1996
shibby adjective positive, pleasing. Probably coined by Phil Ashton for the 2001 film Dude Whre's My Car? in which it is used as a replacement for nouns, verbs, adjectives, proper names, etc.; the original intention in the film was to use the word to mean 'marijuana'; when all drugs references were removed the word remained. This multi-purpose word is also used as a replacement for any verb, and as a lover's nickname. US, 2004
Other than the eight times it's used interjectionally ("Shibby!"), here's the other two uses from the film's transcript:
Jesse and Chester are shibby at the moment. Please leave your shibby at the beep. Shibby.
I hate to say it Chester but maybe we should cut back on the shibbying.
So it was probably coined by Phil Ashton or Phil Stark to refer to marijuana, and then cleaned to refer to anything cool, but could there be some older slang connection to the 1992 alt.drugs Usenet post?
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Best Answer
As Barrie and Peter have already stated, the OED and Etymonline leave it as being perhaps from Scots smitch, without further clarifying what that is or where it comes from. With no authoritarian clues to guide us, I will indulge in some unfounded (but, I think, reasonable) speculation:
My personal guess would be that this is one of a group of words in Irish and Scottish Gaelic (since my knowledge of Scottish is quite rudimentary, I’ll refer only to the Irish forms here—it’s quite a safe bet that most, if not all, of these also exist in some form or other in Scottish) that refer to something seen as tiny and insignificant, either something verbal or a physical object.
These words all start with sm- plus a vowel usually either /ɪ/ or /ɐ~ə/ and one more consonant. Most of the words are monosyllabic, with this consonant being then final, but some have an extra syllable, usually /ə/, /əɾ/, or /əɫ/ (these are all common nominal endings and are not part of the root of the word—the latter two are non-productive diminutives). There appear to be three groups (all words taken from Foclóir Uí Dhuinnín):
The most common way to form a diminutive in Irish (and Scottish) is to add one of the suffixes -ín, -(e)án, or -óg/-eog at the end; the first of these is by far the most common and productive one. It causes a preceding consonant—i.e., the final consonant in the root or the final r/l in the suffix, if there is one—to become slender if it isn’t already (see Irish phonology for what broad and slender consonants are). Sometimes, this slenderisation is continued backwards to the root-final consonant even if there is a suffix, but not always; similarly, the schwa in the -al/-ar suffixes is sometimes deleted, sometimes not.
All the words listed above can be turned into diminutives very easily with this suffix, and quite a few of them would either coincide in Irish or be so similar that they would certainly coincide if borrowed into English:
Of these, a few are common enough to have entered the dictionaries: smidirín ‘tiny piece/scrap/fragment’ (this is the source of the English word ‘smithereens’, as in ‘blow something to smithereens’); and smitín ‘rap, smart blow as with a stump of wood’.
Of the others, I myself have certainly heard people using smidín and smuitín in regular speech in Irish to refer to little scraps of paper, pieces of dust, flecks of paints, specks of dandruff, smudges—things like that.
My guess would be that ‘smidgen’ (and perhaps also ‘smudge’) in English comes from one or more of these diminutives and their source words. Both ‘smidgen’ and ‘smudge’ appear to have existed originally both with a final /dʒ/ and a final /tʃ/, which fits perfectly with being from a mixture of these words that also vacillate between final d and final t.
It appears from a bit of Googling that this Reader’s Digest PDF gives a similar etymology, so I’m not the first to advance this theory after all, it seems.