Vol. 09 · Loanwords ·Yiddish ·1890s
Schmuck
from שמאָק (shmok)
- Meaning
- A foolish or contemptible person.
- Source word
- שמאָק (shmok)
- Route into English
- Yiddish *shmok* (penis, originally), meaning shifted to "fool" in American English → by the 1960s the sexual sense had faded in English and it was used casually, though it retains vulgarity in Yiddish.
- Arrived
- 1890s
From Yiddish
Mass migration from Ashkenazi Eastern Europe to New York (1880–1920) funnelled Yiddish into American English, from where it diffused globally.
English borrows.
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