skookumn.adj.

1838 S. Parker Jrnl. Tour beyond Rocky Mtns. 336 Evil spirit, skookoom. Hell, skookoom.

1844 D. Lee & J. H. Frost Ten Years in Oregon xvi. 180 He [sc. the medicine man] transfers the ‘sko-koms’, or ‘tam-an-a-was’, or disease, wholly or in part from the patient to himself.

1846 Johnson & Winter Route Across Rocky Mts. iii. 54 Several loud shouts are uttered in as frightful a manner as they are able. They then open their fingers gradually, to allow the terrified Scocum, (evil spirit,) to make his escape.

1900 Oregon Hist. Soc. Q. I. 185 The benefits of his fishery had gone, not to the people, but to the wicked skookum.

1847 J. Palmer Jrnl. Trav. Rocky Mts. 151/1 Skokum, strong, stout.

1891 H. W. Seton-Karr Bear Hunting in White Mts. viii. 83 He believed that a bear would hold out its paw towards a man at a distance and feel whether he was skookum—brave.

1901 Daily Colonist (Victoria, Brit. Columbia) 29 Oct. 6/3 I would have gone up myself but could not stand the five days' tramp with 40 or 50 pounds on my back. It takes a ‘skookum’ man to stand a trip like that.

1913 E. MacLennan in MacLennan & Snow Songs of Neukluk 15 She had a skookum load of logs, but I couldn't understand With the rough-lock and the gee~pole how it scaped from her command.

1941 J. Smiley Hash House Lingo 50 Skookum, good; all right.

1949 Sierra Club. Bull. (San Francisco) June 105 Billy and Pete were skookum, and I was pretty good myself in those days.

1962 E. Lucia Klondike Kate 12 As Klondike Kate, she was a mighty skookum gal.

1975 Islander (Victoria, Brit. Columbia) 6 July 4/2 Ted, by this time a skookum young fellow of 20, then turned his eyes further west.

1888 J. A. Lees & W. J. Clutterbuck B.C. 1887: Ramble in Brit. Columbia xvii. 184 We arranged to meet at the Skookumchuck Creek (‘the stream of the rapid torrent’).

1899 Bull. U.S. Fish Comm. 1898 18 73 The passage is a ‘skookum chuck’, through which the water runs in whirls and rapids almost constantly and with great velocity.

1911 E. P. Johnson Legends of Vancouver 47 You have listened to the call of the Skookum Chuck, as the Chinook speakers call the rollicking, tumbling streams that sing their way through the canyons.

1940 K. S. Pinkerton Three's Crew x. 102 A tidal rapids is a ‘skookum chuck’.

1959 Times 18 June (Queen in Canada Suppl.) p. xii/1 This is the salt chuck, the skookum chuck..in fact the Pacific.

1873 R. C. L. Brown Klatsassan 165 It was only after much waw-waw (parley) and sundry threats of the skookum-house (gaol)..that one of them was got to undertake to carry him.

1901 Daily Colonist (Victoria, Brit. Columbia) 5 Oct. 3/2 There were no less than fourteen inmates of the ‘skookum house’ on Cormorant Street last night.

1905 R. Beach Pardners (1912) ii. 59 So I was dragged to the ‘skookum-house’, where I spent the night figuring out my finish.

1910 ‘O. Henry’ Whirligigs xxi. 235 The idea..gives me hyperesthesia of the roopteetoop! The skookum house for yours!

1965 Islander (Victoria, Brit. Columbia) 9 May 6/2 In 1872, Frederick Brent was appointed Justice of the Peace and a skookum-house (jail) was built on his land.