List of English words of Yiddish origin

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This is a list of words that have entered the English language from the Yiddish language, many of them by way of American English. There are differing approaches to the romanization of Yiddish orthography (which uses the Hebrew alphabet); thus, the spelling of some of the following words may be variable (for example, shlep is a variant of schlep, and shnozz, schnoz).

Contents

Many of these words are more common in the American entertainment industry (initially via vaudeville), the Catskills/Borscht Belt, and New York City English. A number of Yiddish words also entered English via large Jewish communities in Britain, particularly London, where Yiddish has influenced Cockney English.

Background

Yiddish is a Germanic language, originally spoken by Jews in Central and later Eastern Europe, written in the Hebrew alphabet, and containing a substantial substratum of Hebrew words as well as numerous loans from Slavic languages. [1] For that reason, some of the words listed originated in Hebrew or Slavic languages, but have entered English via Yiddish.

Yiddish is closely related to modern German, and many Yiddish words have German cognates; in some cases it is difficult to tell whether a particular word was borrowed from Yiddish or from German. Yiddish is written in the Hebrew alphabet, and Yiddish words may be transliterated into Latin spelling in a variety of ways; the transliterated spelling of Yiddish words and the conventional spelling of German are usually different, but the pronunciations are frequently the same (e.g., שוואַרץ, shvarts in Yiddish is pronounced the same way as schwarz in German).

Many of these words have slightly different meanings and usage in English from the Yiddish originals. For example, chutzpah usually has a negative connotation in Yiddish, meaning improper audacity, while in English it is more positive. In Yiddish, שלעפּ, shlep is usually a transitive verb for carrying (or dragging) something else, while the English word, schlep, is also used as an intransitive verb, for dragging oneself, and as a noun for an insignificant person or hanger-on. In Yiddish, גליטש, glitsh means 'slip', while in English, glitch means malfunction.

List of words

These English words of Yiddish origin, except as noted, are in the online editions of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (AHD), or the Merriam-Webster dictionary (MW). The parentheses-enclosed information at the end of each word's entry starts with the original Yiddish term in Hebrew script, the Latin script transliteration, and the literal English translation (if different from the English definition given earlier). This may be followed by additional relevant languages (mostly Hebrew and German). One or more dictionary references appear at the end.

Gelt Chocolate-Gold-Coins.jpg
Gelt
Knish, a baked snack, commonly filled with potato Lower East Side - Schimmel Knish 2.jpg
Knish, a baked snack, commonly filled with potato
Latkes, potato pancakes Latkes.jpg
Latkes, potato pancakes


B

C

D

F

G

H

K

L

M

N

O

P

S

T

Carrot tzimmes with honey TzimmesS.jpg
Carrot tzimmes with honey

V

Y

Yarmulke Casamento judeu1.jpg
Yarmulke

Z

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ "Bartleby.com: Great Books Online – Quotes, Poems, Novels, Classics and hundreds more". bartleby.com. Archived from the original on 16 October 2007.
  2. ↑ Horwitz, Bert (19 August 2005). "A Hill of Bupkis". The Jewish Daily Forward. New York. Retrieved 28 November 2010.
  3. ↑ See also Wex, Michael. Born to Kvetch. St. Martin's Press, New York, 2005.
  4. ↑ Even-Shoshan, Avraham (1966). HaMilon HeHadash (The New Dictionary) (in Hebrew). Kiriat-sefer. ISBN   978-9651701559.
  5. ↑ "World Wide Words: The whole megillah". World Wide Words.
  6. ↑ Doyle, Dr Siobhán (20 February 2020). "A short history of shemozzles in the GAA". RTÉ.ie .
  7. ↑ Carr, David, "Abramson’s Exit at The Times Puts Tensions on Display", The New York Times , 18 May 2014. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
  8. 1 2 Jeffrey Goldberg, "Words That The New York Times Will Not Print", The Atlantic , 2010-06-09. "'Joe Lieberman is too polite to complain, but the Gore questions are getting to be a pain in the tuchis.' ... Though Leibovich's copy editors allowed tuchus to be spelled incorrectly, the Washington Post is obviously more tolerant of Jewish flamboyance ..."

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