Word suggestion - sesh

[mkenuk]

The COD notes that sesh is British, informal, although a glance at the ngram viewer suggests that it might not be entirely unknown on the other side of the pond.

Short for session and often used to refer to a drinking session. I seem to have come across it in reading two or three times in the last few weeks.

[birdy]

That's one I haven't come across.

[cmh]

I have heard of it but please NO! Don't encourage words like this!!!!Let it remain in silly magazines and illiterate newspapers if it has to be anywhere.

[Jacki]

I wholeheartedly agree with CMH.

[mkenuk]

The reason I suggested sesh was that I tried to play it in the shapeless game and got the 'sorry, not known' reply.
In that same game, however, both pash and pashes - two other, similar words that might be described as 'silly' and 'dated' - were allowed.

The word may have become popular recently through being used as slang in Twitter messages -although one of the quotations in 'Wiktionary' is dated 1944 - but I think it is moving towards being accepted as a 'real' word.

The 'Wiktionary' entry for 'sesh' includes a number of quotations, including one from the 'Financial Times' (hardly a newspaper for illiterates!)  and another from a novel by the respected Scottish thriller writer Ian Rankin.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sesh

[Alan W]

Lighten up, cmh and Jacki! Next you'll be complaining about shortening telephone to phone.

I don't recall seeing or hearing sesh, but I see it is in use here in Australia. For example the Chronicle, of Toowoomba in Queensland, on 22 September:

I've put a table and some chairs in my back yard when I've had a few friends over for a Sunday afternoon sesh and we've had a good afternoon but I never claimed it was a beer garden.

(The OED identifies the colloquial sense of session, meaning a "period devoted to heavy drinking; a drinking-bout", as chiefly Australian.)

And as you say, MK, it's not unknown in the US these days. The New York-based online publication Elite Daily ("the ultimate digital destination for millennial women who are discovering the world, and themselves in the process"), on 28 October:

And while you can apply it for a quick 10-to-15-minute masking sesh, you can also feel free to leave it on overnight in lieu of your go-to moisturizer, as it doesn't necessarily need to be washed off.

In future sesh and its plural seshes will be accepted as rare words.