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• schmuck •

Pronunciation: shmêk • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: 1. A blighter, cad, bounder, churl, rat fink, jerk, rotter. 2. Doofus, knucklehead, nitwit, blockhead, goofball, dork, dope, nincompoop.

Notes: Here is a word that English has polished up from its vulgar origins to a word appropriate for all occasions. It comes with an adjective, schmucky, which opens the door for an adverb, schmuckily and schmuckiness, neither of which my spellchecker likes.

In Play: The first sense of today's word can be taken as rather abrasive: "Ty Kuhn can be an ornery schmuck in the boardroom." The second sense of the word is less harsh: "When Manny Shavitz gets a few drinks in him, he becomes an absolute schmuck."

Word History: Today's Good Word was borrowed from Yiddish shmok "contemptible, foolish person; the 'family jewels'. Most etymologies list its source as Polish smok "dragon", though the spelling is a bit off. The use of 'family jewels' in this sense is strictly American and shmok entered Yiddish years before. American Yiddish speakers seem to have altered the spelling and pronunciation under the influence of the German word Schmuck "jewelry". If Schmuck is involved, it is related to English smock, from the same source as Old German schmücken "to wind, twist, dress" (today it means "to bedeck, decorate"). That would make its origin the PIE word (s)meuk- "slide, slip(ery)", source of Latin mucus, Lituanian smukti "slip down", Czech smeknout "slip, take off", and Latvian smudzis "smudge". (Now let's thank Monica Freund for finding this gem of a German Good Word and sharing it with us.)

Well, I guess that puts paid to Smuckers jams and jellies, eh?

I love my Jewish friends. But I find Yiddish to be an inferior language filled with schmuckish words. German and Hebrew are among the great languages of the world, approaching English in their greatness.

I respectfully disagree with the good Dr GoodWord: I think “schmuck” still retains enough of the vapors of its original meaning to disqualify its use for “any occasion.” Same for its non-Yiddish cousins “prick” and “dick.” None are terribly offensive, but I’m judicious in using them. Also, all three words are used only to describe men, never women, and that is a reminder of the words’ original offensive meaning. Same for “bitch”: because we use that word to describe nasty, overbearing persons only if they are female, the word will never escape its disreputable status.

As to Philip’s comment that Yiddish is an “inferior language,” well, I have to draw a deep breath. I don’t rank languages. I do note their differences. Russian and Ukrainian do not use articles; does that make them more efficient? German jams nouns together (like boxcars on a freight train, as Mark Twain observed); does that make it clumsy? Many non-Indo-European languages sound harsh to my western ears: that’s on me, merely a reflection of my own experience.

Perhaps I feel this way because I live in multilingual Miami. One of the major languages here is Haitian Creole. Perhaps some French speakers would describe that as an inferior language. OK, bad example: those same Frenchmen would also describe what is spoken in Belgium as definitely an “inferior language.”

One of my cousins translated the Bible into Hatina Creole. He used a French language Bible as one of his sources. In his opinion, Hatina Creole was just as close to the language spoken in France as is Canadian French. I worked in Montreal one year. They had a language police there.

Slava,
I am assuming your reference to Schmucker's is to the colors one sees when their jellies are lined up at a sunlit window?

Jewelry indeed, for the eye and the palate, no?

Debby m.