The Skeeve: An Analysis

 

Some of you folks may be unfamiliar with the term “skeeve”, commonly used to refer to an instinctive, immediate, physical reaction of shock and disgust to an unpleasant stimulus. I will attempt to clarify by using examples to illustrate, as well as to address some concepts that are related to the skeeve, such as the wiggins and the huzz.

A skeeve is not to be mistaken for a wiggins. A wiggins is the chill that accompanies a feeling of fright, or at least of weird, Twilight-Zone-ish coincidence. You know that saying, “A goose just walked across my grave”? That is a wiggins. A skeeve is also not exactly a huzz, which is a wonderful Southern term (anything with a short “u” sounds best when uttered with a serious drawl; my favorite is “whut?!?”) that describes that “ick-nasty” feeling you get when you suddenly realize either that there was a worm in your apple (half a worm = Super Huzz) or that the extremely pervy guy who sits in the back of the class just took a picture of you with his phone when you bent over to pick up a pencil you dropped.

A skeeve is more physical than the mere shiver of a wiggins or the stomach drop of a huzz. A minor skeeve typically involves a rapid shaking “no” of the head with shoulders trembling and is frequently accompanied by what I like to call “involuntary jazz hands”. The full-body skeeve combines the abovementioned with shaking of the lower body, as well, and a sufficiently disgusting or creepy stimulus may also induce the “walking skeeve”, which is a full-body skeeve that requires the sufferer to pace around a bit while skeeving, in order to diffuse the shock. The ultimate skeeve would be a walking, full-body skeeve starting from a seated position. If you can tell your drinking buddies a story so severely jacked up that you can propel them from their chairs and make them march around writhing and making the baby-tasting-a-lemon face, you have scored.

Lastly, the root word “skeeve” is both a noun (as in, “That gave me such a skeeve”) and a verb (as in, “Richard’s breath made me skeeve so hard”), including other common forms, such as skeeving and skeeved, and has also been adapted as an adjective (as in, “Who is that skeevy guy in the corner?”), so there should be a skeeve derivation for pretty much any purpose. 

And there you have it: a thorough analysis of the skeeve. Now the next time you find yourself making involuntary jazz hands over something that tastes (or just sounds) terrible, you'll know what to call it!

Here are some creepy songs that might make you skeeve: https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-creepiest-songs-by-beatles.html

Image credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-woman-with-a-disgusted-facial-expression-8637946/