COSHO

[ko’-SHO] or [KU’-shu] — noun.

Meaning: Hog; pig; swine; pork; ham; bacon.

Origin: French, le cochon, ‘pig’

Sometimes rendered as gosho, legosho, or lecosho in older sources, “cosho” (with the accent on the second syllable) was a French loanword used to mean pig or swine, but by context can be said to refer to the meat of the animal, though if one wanted to specify they could say “cosho itlwillie” (hog meat; pork).

Variants included  “klootchman cosho” (sow pig), “tenas cosho” (piglet), and “cosho glease” (lard) as well as “wawa kahkwa cosho” (squeal), covering the famous line of the Hog Industry, “konaway ikta pe wawa kahkwa cosho” (everything but the squeal).

The word is also used in “siwash cosho” (aboriginal pig) used to refer to the meat of a seal, being somewhat similar in appearance, if not in taste, to that of swine,  and was as much a staple of coastal First Nation life as pork was to the British or the Americans. It’s worth noting that this expression was purely a jargon creation, and an equally prevalent word used throughout the region was “olehiyu” (seal), which was of Chinookan origin.