cwtch

From Welsh cwtsh (“hug, cuddle; little corner, recess”), from Middle English couche. Doublet of couch.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /kʊtʃ/
• Rhymes: -ʊtʃ

cwtch (plural cwtches)

1. (Wales) A cubbyhole or similar hiding place.
   • 1944, Glyn Jones, “An Afternoon at Ewa Shad's”, in The Water-Music and Other Stories:

     In front of the pavement again stretched a flat patch of rusty ground, a sort of little platform in the side of the hill where the sagging drying-lines stood and a chickens' cwtch built of orange-boxes.

   • 2007 August 20, Mike Buckingham, Western Telegraph:

     "In better times when the coalman called at our home in William Street he heaved the sacks through the front door and put their contents into the ‘cwtch’ under the stairs, a messy business indeed."

2. (Wales) A hug or cuddle.
   • 2007 November 18, Ieuan Evans, The Telegraph:

     I am expecting the big man to come round the corner and give me a ‘cwtch’ as he has done beside countless rugby fields.

   • 2011 February 17, Rachel Mainwaring, South Wales Echo:

     I don’t mind them coming in for a quick cwtch before trudging back off to their own rooms, as long as no conversation is required and it is literally just a five-minute cuddle.

cwtch (third-person singular simple present cwtches, present participle cwtching, simple past and past participle cwtched)

1. (Wales) To hug or cuddle.
2. (Wales) To crouch down.

• See also Thesaurus:embrace

• OED 2006