Hi Mikkel; It's a kids word that we drop as we grow up. Kids smush all kinds of things. You step on a bug. Kids smush them. You also smush a peanut butter and jelly sandwich together. What's the word the really cool adults use... "fuse". :-) I hope this helps.

It's a playful word that is used in the context of casual conversation, and I've heard it many times. Children, mothers with children, casual arts and crafts - It's not a word brawny men would use, unless they were allowing themselves to become playful like kids. The spelling is also playful. It kind of takes itself from a variety of other similar words and combines them in whatever way the user desires - mash, smash, slush, moosh, mush, shmush, shmoosh, etc.. However, were I to have to choose exactly how I wanted to spell it, I agree with you that they might have a certain connotation for each spelling. I think of smush is more of a physical smashing of something playful and moist - Playdough, cookie dough, pie dough, mixing of salves, that sort of thing. I think that smoosh does seem like it has more of a dry and squiggly feel to it. Just was mentioned with the dog face rumpling. As you can see, since there is no real definition, you can probably relax on using the exact one. We all might use a different variation as well, depending on how we feel. :)

I appear to be the outlier here as I have heard this word plenty of times. Both in person and on TV. And I would have spelled it as you wrote it in your original question. The context I have heard it most in is when rubbing a pet's face. Not to crush it or smash it or hurt the animal in any way but imagine you put your hands on either side of a dog's face or underneath it and you rub it reasonably firmly. That would be 'smushing' in my mind.

I think it's one of those words that you say occasionally, but never write down. I would have spelled it the same way that Torusan did.

I think I heard it once or twice on tv, used to describe plastering paint on an oil painting, ‘smooshing’ thick globs of it on the canvas. The meaning is something like a combination of mashing and smearing.