More Yiddish Pondering...

[gnomi]

or, Don't Worry about Me, I'll Just Sit Here in the Dark with My Vocabulary

Yesterday's poll included the following words that some people weren't familiar with:

Schmatte = rag. Can also be used to refer to what I think of as "loaf around the house" clothing and the like. For example, "I was in my pajamas when the doorbell rang, so I just grabbed a random schmatte and tossed it on so I was decent for the UPS guy."

Mishpoche = family. Can be family in the non-biological sense as well. When we attended the 85th birthday party of one of mabfan's cousins, everyone was putting on their name badges how they fit into the overall scheme of the gathering. Having no desire to completely draw out the relationship (mabfan's great² grandfather was Ernie's great grandfather), I annotated mine with "mishpoche."

Narrishkeit = foolishness.

Tsuris = trouble. Covers everything from illness and tragedy to computer malfunction.

Then there were the other words from Yiddish that folks said they use regularly as English (where more than one person mentioned it, I credit to the first mentioner) (glosses in parentheses all my interpretations):

From tygerseye: megilla (long story), oy vey (an interjection denoting a problem), mentsch (a good person), schmutz (dirt, filth), schmaltz (excessive sentimentality)

From docorion: schmuck (an obscenity, though most folks don't realize just how vulgar it is in Yiddish), mishegas (craziness), meshugge (crazy)

From seborn: yenta (busybody, matchmaker)

From doeeyedbunny: schvitz (to sweat), nebbish (a nobody), kvetch (to complain)

On a related topic, a while ago I discovered that MS Word considers the following words sufficiently mainstream English that the spell check doesn't consider them misspelled:

Pesach
Chutzpah
Klutz
Hadassah
Shabbat
Abba
Schlep

Comments

[nwl.livejournal.com]

From reading your discussion on Yiddish, I think I'm familiar with just about all the words you discuss, but not how they are spelled. I know them when I hear them.

I was watching the All-Star game last night and noticed that one of the pitchers had the last name of "Putz". It was pronounced as "puts" as in "to place something".

[caryabend.livejournal.com]

I grew up with a Matt Putz (not Jewish). His mother's name is Gaye.

[waits for titters to subside]

[waits a bit longer for additional giggles]

I'm sure this wasn't an issue lem before the family moved into a Philly suburb that was almost 40% Jewish.