It's Labor Day, So Yiddish is De Rigueur

I just finished reading a book on Yiddish (see my Goodreads post) called Just Say Nu by Michael Wex (Harper Collins, New York, 2008). Many common words come from Yiddish. Some I knew (should I just say nu?) and some I was not aware were Yiddish in origin.

The first word I encountered in the book (p. 10) was schmooze, about which Wex writes:

A SHMOOS... (the Yiddish rhymes with loose), a real conversation, begins with the idea of partnership. It’s no accident that shmoos…comes from a Hebrew word that means “tiding, rumor”; something that you’ve heard rather than something that you’ve said. Shmoozing is based on listening, on the idea of responding to what you hear and being answered in turn by someone who has been listening to you.

Schmooze in English usage (which first entered English as a verb in 1897, and added a noun sense in 1939) has a more general meaning of genial conversation, with a hint of ulterior motive – to cozy up to someone through conversation or polite banter. Listening is not as prominent a part of schmoozing in English as it is in Yiddish.

The second word today is nudnik, defined as a boring and dull pest. My dictionary calls it an Americanism, acknowledging its Yiddish roots. Etymologically it comes from either the Polish or Russian word for boredom or boring (nuda or nudnyi), and has only been in common usage in America since 1947.

The Yiddish term has a more nauseous sense to it, according to Wex, p. 56:

English has lost the gut-wrenching physicality that Yiddish – ever mindful of its speakers’ stomachs – never fails to stress; the basic meaning of nudnik, usually translated as “bore” or “pest,” is “person who provokes vomit in another; agent of upchuck.” NUDZHEN, an alternative version of nudyen, gives us the English noun and verb nudge, as in “Quit nudging,” “Don’t be such a nudge” – i.e., “shut up before you make me sick to my stomach.”

The aforementioned meaning of nudge, a secondary definition in my dictionary, is the most recent English transplant of today's words, having arrived in English in the 1960s. 

The primary definition has a different meaning: to push slightly, particularly with the elbow. It arrived as a verb in the 1670s, from one of the Scandinavian languages (in Norwegian the word for rub is nyggje while in Icelandic it is nugga.)

Our final word today is also associated with digestion, but you would not likely guess its association. Schmaltz (shmalts in Yiddish) is literally “melted animal fat.” So how did it come to mean exaggerated sentimentalism, a meaning it’s had in English since 1935? You have to go back to a time when it was common experience to take the fat of animals like sheep and cattle, and render (melt) it until it becomes the “essential ingredient in candles and soap” according to Wex. Shmalts “is regarded as one of the greatest goods.”  It could in past times have made someone wistful, reminiscent of “Mom and matzoh pie.” Hence the sentimentalism, relating to two basic staples of the old home.

Next week we’ll go from food words into more sex-related words from Yiddish.