Don't Get All Verklempt - The Final in Our Series on Yiddish Words

I’ve been relating Yiddish words adopted into English, after reading Just Say Nu by Michael Wex (Harper Collins, New York, 2008), and ran out of room last week for one word, so let’s begin with that: schlong.

Schlong (schlang in Yiddish) is another word for snake that was adopted in Yiddish to refer to the penis, the meaning carried over into English. While schmuck came from the Old Polish word for snake, schlong comes from the German word for snake, which in Middle High German is schlange. It is the most recent of the Yiddish words for penis to come into use in English, only having arrived in 1969. (Although I think I heard its use earlier, in high school in the 1960s, my memory may be wrong, but it is always the case that a word is used in spoken language a while before it appears in written works.)

Now, time for some non-sexual words from the book. (Finally, you say?) Wex says (on page 208), in talking about Mob (criminal) Yiddish words, while talking about words for prison:

The original meaning of the word khayder [Hebrew school] is “room,” hence its use in this context. Yeshiva is literally “a sitting.” Lokh is the Yiddish word for “hole.” Kan is a Hebrew adverb that means “here.” I’ve been unable to determine with any certainty if this is the source of can as prison (“he’s in the can”) in English.

While that’s possible, I also wonder if it’s the source of the “I’m in the can” meaning when someone is in the bathroom (loo, WC or water closet in England). The word “can” comes from the Old English word canne, which meant a cup or container. There are similar words for a container in many Germanic languages, and with the creation of canned food in the middle-19^th century, the word “can” was adopted in 1867 to describe those containers. The use of “can” for toilet came in about 1900, a shortening of “piss-can,” so its tie to the meaning of “room” as in “I’m in the can” is not likely either. No mention is made of its use for jail, but I found that its use to describe the buttocks (whether callipygian or not) is from about 1910. While “can” is also a verb with several meanings, primary of which is “to be able to,” that use is so old (before 900) and so basic to many languages (German, Norse, Gothic kann) that it has little we can (See how I used it?) gain from more on it here.

Our final word from Yiddish is schlock, which means cheap or trashy. Wex (p. 211) explains how it came from the Yiddish shlak:

…technically, a shlyak, but try to say it quickly – a tailors’ term for selvage, the protective edge of a fabric that the tailor cuts off and throws away before using the cloth….So shlock, a term that entered English through the rag trade, originally meant crap that should have been tossed away but that you were trying to unload – for money.

Schlock came to English at least by 1915 as a noun, but within a year was being used as an adjective. In the 1960s schlockmeister appeared (to describe the seller) and a different adjective form, schlocky, also came into use. 

There are other words to come into English from Yiddish, but these are all we'll cover at this point. I know that will make you all verklempt.