Coochee

In dance and related uses

The term is a slang descriptor often used in relation to a belly dance or wiggling, as in "Coochie Coochie dance", "Hoochee-Coochee", and the saying "coochee coochee coo" when tickling an infant. It is also used as sexually suggestive slang in the Southern United States, referring to the vagina.

It may trace back to a song performed at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair by a dancer named Little Egypt, who was filmed in 1896 by Thomas Edison for the Coochee Coochee Dance film short. The song was created by Sol Bloom.

One explanation of the etymology attributes it to the French word coucher, meaning to lie down.

After the sexually provocative dance became wildly popular during and after the World's Fair, the term "hoochie coochie man" came to refer to someone who either watched the performer(s) or ran the show. Alternatively, from the directly sexual meaning of "hoochie coochie", the term referred to someone who greatly enjoyed sexual intercourse. The erotic dancing was popular in film booths and was a precursor of the striptease.

In Native American terms

The term is also used in another context. Coacoochee was a Native American chief, and the term "coochee" is used in various Florida place names including the Withlacoochee River and Croom-A-Coochee. The river named "Withlacoochee" may be from a Muskhogean dialect compounded of we ("water"), thlako ("big"), and chee ("little"), or "little big water", signifying "little river" in the Creek language. We-lako or wethlako may also refer to a lake, it may signify a river of lakes, or lake river. There are two rivers in Florida named Withlacoochee. One flows just to the east of Tsala Apopka Lake and the St. Johns River, which flows through a series of large and small lakes, and was called welaka by the Seminoles. The other is in north central Florida in Madison County, and flows into the Suwannee River at the border of Madison and Hamilton counties, and the state of Georgia.

Coochie was also a station on the Texas and Pacific Railroad in Louisiana, taken from the name of the Seminole settlement in Florida.

In music

Various folk and popular songs including the term have been recorded, including an Alabama folk song, "Coochi Coochi Coo" by Ella Fitzgerald, the song "Coochie Coo", and 2 Live Crew's "Pop That Coochie".

In literature

In the 1996 play The Vagina Monologues, "coochi", as in "my coochi snorcher", is one of the slang terms for the vagina. The form "coochi" is derived from the more common "coochie" of the early 1990s.