Word Play: Colorful expressions

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Friday March 8. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next: WORLD commentator George Grant with his monthly schtick, Word Play.

GEORGE GRANT: The February issue of the New Criterion includes a short story by the legendary filmmaker Woody Allen. Though it often features poetry, book reviews, and serious literary criticism, Allen’s “Breakfast Special” is the first ever piece of fiction in the publication’s forty-two-year history. That unprecedented editorial decision, along with the swirl of controversy surrounding the author, has created something of a media ruckus. But what caught my eye was Allen’s deft use of language.

The tale centers on the experiences of a character named Murray Tempkin. He is described as “a slim, bespectacled thirty-year-old writer, who on a good hair day resembles a scientist or an intellectual but should the weather turn humid looks more like some kind of meshuggener.”

I had never run across that term before. It turns out, meshuggener is a Yiddish word meaning “foolish,” “daft,” “outlandish” or “crazy.” What a great word.

Yiddish has gifted modern English with a whole arsenal of colorful expressions. A Germanic dialect, originally spoken by Central European Jews, Yiddish is a linguistic stew with Hebrew, Slavic, Germanic, and Latin roots.

My father grew up in a German Catholic neighborhood in the Midwest. Nevertheless, he often used Yiddish words like chutzpah, glitch, klutz, and schmuck. He referred to his nose as a schnoz, to a sales pitch as a schpiel, to knickknacks around the house as tchotchkes, to junk as schlock, to complaining as kvetching, and to midday snacking as noshing.

And speaking of food, Yiddish words like bagels, blintzes, borscht, kosher, lox, matzah, and schmear often appear in our cookbooks, grocery aisles, and restaurant menus.

I learned dreidel from Don McLean’s American Pie album, schlepping from I Love Lucy reruns, schlemiel from the sitcom Laverne and Shirley, golem from J.R.R. Tolkien, and shrek from the cartoon character voiced by Eddie Murphy and Mike Myers.

Oy veh! Who knew we had so many Yiddish words in our everyday parlance?

Mazel tov!

I’m George Grant.

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