This week's theme is Words from Yiddish. All credit here to Leo Rosten, our primary source.

We'll also introduce the concept of the $20 word and the $50 word. A $20 word adds zest to ordinary conversation: it's perhaps one not often spoken in conversation, but the hearer will understand it or pick it up from context. A $50 word is for writing-vocabulary, but might sound overly-erudite in conversation. The test, though arbitrary and subjective, will be informed by asking, "Does it generate more than 50,000 google-hits, or fewer?" (excluding names, foreign-language, etc

[This message was edited by wordcrafter on Mon Jul 29th, 2002 at 8:01.]

golum or goylum: a $50 word from Hebrew "matter without shape", or "a yet unformed thing". [Psalm 139.16] 1. a robot 2. a simpleton; fool 3. a clumsy person; a clod; someone who is all thumbs 4. a gracceless, tactless type 5. someone who is subnormal.
Examples: "He looks like a golem." "He is as slow-witted as a golum."

Mary Shelly, in authoring Frankenstein, may have gotten the idea from the golem legends.

When the scientists at the great Weizmann Institute in Israel built their first large electronic computer, they dubbed it Golem I.

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Originally posted by wordcrafter:

Mary Shell[e]y, in authoring _Frankenstein,_ may have gotten the idea from the _golem_ legends.

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I've often wondered if J. R. R. Tolkien named his Gollum after the same legends.

Welcome, RJ Good to meet you. Pull up a chair and make yourself at home.

It is one of the shames of my life that I've not read Tolkien. But I do vaguely recall a character named Sholem the Golem, yet cannot for the life of me remember where he comes from. Can anyone help?

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I've often wondered if J. R. R. Tolkien named his Gollum after the same legends.

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The author of this site thinks so.

The word golem originally meant lump and derived from the word glam meaning to wrap up. The term, golem, was used in the Bible (Psalms 139:16) to mean a developing or unfinished substance.

The most famous legend is that Rabbi Judah Loew (1525-1609), one of the great Kabbalistic philosphers, created a giant clay figure called Golem, and put the word "ameth" (truth) on it. To kill the golem the tablet had to be removed, and the first letter of "ameth" had to be erased to spell "meth," meaning death. The intention was to protect the Jewish people of Prague from the dangers of religious prosecution and the bloodshed of pogroms, which were carried out because many people believed that Jews made their Passover bread from flour, water and the blood of Christian children.

The Golem, who had a child-like innocence despite his size and ugly appearance, speechlessly warned the Jews not to eat poisoned matzoh on the eve of Passover and dragged wrongdoers to the police station. Eventually, his actions helped force the royal decree that made the blood libel against the Jews illegal.

Mary Shelley appropriated the legend, and reworked it to produce Frankenstein.

[This message was edited by arnie on Mon Jul 29th, 2002 at 23:11.]

Miss MacKenzie: a female who will "do it"; a young lady who is loved by all.

An obscure one here. This bit of Yiddish-American slang has long since fallen out of usage, but you'll enjoy the derivation.

Yiddish has a heavy component of German, and in German "machen sie", means do it or make it. The pronunciation is much like "MacKenzie". Hence young gentlemen (and I use the term loosely) had a code to privately discuss the interesting subject of whether a lady was of also "loose terms". To discuss the "lay of the land", if you will

PS: I'm no german-scholar. Any corrections would be cheerfully appreciated

chacham:a clever, wise or learned man or woman; but (sarcastically) a fool, a wise guy; one who tries to be clever but suffers a downfall. Similarly chachma: a wise or profound saying or action; but (derisively) a foolish move or performance. The negative meanings are by far the more common, and (says Rosten) "No word will more swiftly establish you as one who knows Yiddish." The ch sounds are the aggressive, reverberating Scottish kh.

Examples:
--A proud young chachem told his grandmother that he was going to become a doctor of philosophy. The bubbe smiled proudly: "Wonderful. But what kind of disease is 'philosophy'?"

--Wife to husband at night: "Get up, Max. I'm freezing. Close the window; it's cold outside!" Sighed Max, "Chachem! And if I close the window, will it be warm outside?"

--Amid a frightful storm at sea, the captain asked one of the passengers, a professional magician, to distract the frightened passengers. The magician gave a dazzling performance, making cards disappear, turning scarves into flags, and for his gand finale presented a parrot who, he announced, "will now perform the greatest feet of magic in the history of prestidigitation."
-------All eyes turned to the parrot; drums rolled; trumpets blew -- and suddenly a tremendous wave smashed the ship in two. The passengers found themselves thrashing in the water, clinging to bits of flotsam. As the parrot floated by, one man fixed a cold stare on him and said bitterly, "Nu? Was this chachma?"

Oy! Vay!

Shikse (Non-Jewish woman--"I love to date them, but never want to marry them")
Even though I am Jewish, I am still called a "Shikse" because of my blonde hair and blue eyes.

Shmate Old rag
My son carried around a blanket everywhere he went. Naturally, it became old, torn, and dirty. We called it his shmate--quite a perfect name for it.

re schmatte:
The scene: a fancy boutique in Paris.

Tourista: Combien francs pour cette chemise?
Clerk: Cette chemise est soixante francs.
Tourista: Soixante francs? Pour cette schmatte???
Clerke: Une schmatte, madame????!!! Quelle chutzpah!!!!!

>> "Miss MacKenzie: a female who will "do it"; a young lady who is loved by all."

Very interesting! There's a humorous poet I love who wrote in the first decade of the 1900's -- very obscure, because he made the great career-mistake of dying very young. I wonder whether, when he choose the name "MacKenzie" for a female in one of his poems (initial stanzas below), he had this bit of yiddish in mind. Probably so, judging by the line I highlighted.

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Matilda Maud Mackenzie / frankly hadn't any chin,
Her hands were rough, her feet she / turned invariably in;
Her general form was Geman,
By which I mean that you
Her waist could not determine
To within a foot or two:
And not only did she stammer,
But she used the kind of grammar
That is called, for sake of euphony, askew.

From what I say about her, / don't imagine I desire
A prejudice against this / worthy creature to inspire.
She was willing, she was active,
She was sober, she was kind,
But she never looked attractive
And she hadn't any mind!
I knew her more than slightly,
And I treated her politely
When I met her, but of course I wan't blind!

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Welcome wordnerd! But, can we have that in English please?

last night on Jeopardy! a college guy, for his anecdote, said he still has his baby blanket. and that it is intact. not just a square of cloth safety pinned inside his jacket. and he keeps it for a good luck charm. it is yellow. no doubt it is.

ladies, if i never was glad i'm not a college age girl anymore, i am now. you know where this kind of pablum comes from. this generation with their "time out", etc. if a guy had had a blankie in his dorm room when i was in college, he would have been....i want to say killed, but, really, everybody was so busy getting stoned, they probably would have just laughed themselves to death over blankie. then used it to wipe up spilt bong water.

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Shmate Old rag
My son carried around a blanket everywhere he went. Naturally, it became old, torn, and dirty. We called it his shmate--quite a perfect name for it.

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My son, now 23, still has a baby blanket that was a gift from his aunt when she was in Korea. I had it at my house while he spent three years in the army, and after he would be home for a visit, I would find it neatly folded on the end of the guest bed. When he got out of the service, and got his own apartment, it was the first thing I boxed up! I haven't seen it since!

>> "Can we have that in English, please?" Sorry, here it is. But it works better with the contrast between snooty effete boutique-french and earthy yiddish.

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Tourista: Combien francs pour cette chemise?
Clerk: Cette chemise est soixante francs.
Tourista: Soixante francs? Pour cette schmatte???
Clerke: Une schmatte, madame????!!! Quelle chutzpah!!!!!

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Tourista: How many francs for this shirt?
Clerk: [answers]
Tourista: 60 francs? For this schmatte???
Clerke: A schmatte, madame????!!! What chutzpah!!!!!

tsatske: a delicious word, pronounced to rhyme with "pots the". Diminutive form tsatskeleh. If you can't do the "ts" sound at the start, then change each of the ts's to a ch and say "chotchke".

1. A cheap plaything, trinket or geegaw, as "Give the baby a tsatske to keep it quiet." But the more important use, by extension: 2. A cute but inconsequential female; a sexy but brainless broad; a dumb blonde; the female equivalent of a "boy toy".

As the fur salesman was wrapping up the mink coat for a gentleman and his pretty young lady friend, the tsatske suddenly asked if the mink would be damaged if she were caught in the rain. "Lady", he replied, "did you ever see a mink carrying an umbrella?"

now i have a picture of the mink with the umbrella in my mind. thank you! i will have such funny and pretty dreams tonight. and maybe write a story about him in the morning.. ¿

After yiddish words of negative connotation, it's time for the highest compliment yiddish has to offer.

mensh (rhymes with "bench"): 1. An upright, honorable, decent person. "Come on, act like a mensh!" 2. Someone of consequence; someone to admire and emulate; someone of noble character. "Now, there is a real mensh!"

The finest thing you can say about a man is that he is a mensh. Jewish children often hear the admonition: "Behave like a mensh!" The most withering comment one might make on on someone's character or conduct is, "He is not (or did not act like) a mensh!"

It has nothing to do with success, wealth, status. A judge can be a zhlob; a millionaire can be a momzer; a professor can be a shlemiel, a doctor a klutz, a lawyer a bulvon. The key to being "a real mensh" is nothing less than character: rectitude, dignity, a sense of what is right, responsible, decorous. Many a poor man, many an ignorant man, is a mensh.

Today's MSN home-page advertises:

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Low on office supplies? Don't schlep to the store.

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Even though I am Jewish, I am still called a "Shikse" because of my blonde hair and
blue eyes.
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You think YOU'VE got Jewish identity problems? My girlfriend is Jewish, but red-haired and freckled! Irish milkman, perhaps?

Asa the goy boy

>> Jewish, but red-haired and freckled! Irish milkman, perhaps?
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Asa, your kidding may be close to the mark here. I recall hearing long ago that the the arab langauges of the middle east, the word for a "red-head" literally means throwback, one presuming that some crusader from the 1200's was one of the redhead's ancestors.

Lenny Bruce, when asked why he used so much Yiddish in his comedy, replied : "Yiddish is intrinsically hip. It's the only language in history never used by anyone in a position of power."
What a hoot.
Personally, I've always preferred Yiddish because all the words are onomatopoeic . After all, "schtupping" sounds like exactly what it IS...*ahem*
TC.
P.S. - Wonderful site. I've succeeded in wiling away most of an afternoon here.

Welcome to the mad-house, ThunderChicken. In addition to your other talents, I'm betting that a Texan will be invaluable when we're discussing US regionalisms.

BTW, I happen to have a recipe for a great sweet-and-hot BBQ sauce (for pork, not for chicken).

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Originally posted by wordcrafter:
tsatske: ... 1. A cheap plaything, trinket or geegaw, as "Give the baby a tsatske to keep it quiet." But the more important use, by extension: 2. A cute but inconsequential female; a sexy but brainless broad; a dumb blonde; the female equivalent of a "boy toy"."

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World Wide Words (Quinion) gives a more extended discussion and a somewhat different meaning. Mr. Quinion denies the 2nd meaning given above. I recently exchanged e-mail with Mr. Quinion, and we concluded that that usage may be characteristic of an older generation only. I've heard it; his copy-editor, who is younger than I (sigh), had not.

Quinion, noting the first meaning of "a trinket, ornament, or souvenir," adds, "To non-Jews in America it has most commonly come to mean those promotional items that are handed out at trade shows."