Daniel Klein - Schmegoogle

Text copyright 2020 by Daniel Klein . All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.

ISBN 978-1-7972-0899-2 (epub, mobi)

ISBN 978-1-7972-0727-8 (hardcover)

Design by Cat Grishaver .

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Its the perfect time to bring Yiddish up to date.

That colorful language that sings with poetry, irony, and wit, that supplies English slang with indispensable words like schlep and gnosh, is ripe for a twenty-first century upgrade. For new words that speak to the world of online dating, social media, blended families, marijuana aficionados, and more.

Here to the rescue are new Yiddish words like cyberschmooze and faceboopkes, transmitzvah, baruch-a-toke, and gnoshaholic, and, of course, schmegooglescores of newly minted terms and phrases for an up-to-date and vibrant Yiddish that will once again enrich English and describe life as we live it today.

So hang on to your tucheses and dive into this one-of-a-kind dictionary of a newborn lingo.

v. To engage in long, animated, and gossipy conversation on the internet.

Mildred has transitioned smoothly from the neighborhood gossip to the consummate Facebook gossip. She has turned cyberschmoozing into an art form.

Since the beginning of the Diaspora, Jews have had to adapt to new cultures and languages, including the creation of a secret language for communication among themselves: Yiddish itself. Cyberschmoozing is just the latest step.

From the Yiddish schmooze , to talk intimately and cozily; also, to gossip. A cyberschmooze vocabulary is absolutely necessary in contemporary Yiddish for the simple reason that Jews yak a lot, always have, and now continue to do so in cyberspace.

n. A person who is so insignificant that when you Google their name, nothing comes up.

Morty, God bless him, never married, only goes out of the house to work in the grocery stock room, and never joined a club, political party, or synagogue. On top of it all, he doesnt own a computer or cell phone. No wonder nobody ever heard of him. Hes a bona fide schmegoogle .

The full impact of this put-down is understood when you try this simple experiment: Type an outlandish name into Google and watch a multitude of entries appear. And this schmegoogle only gets a Your search did not match any documents? Oy, such a draycup (loser).

Schmegoogle is derived from a long list of Yiddish put-down words that begin with sch, such as schmo , schmuck , schmendrick , schlemiel , and schlimazel , to name but a few. Old Yiddish dictionaries tell us that a schlemiel is a clumsy person and a schlimazel is a very unlucky person; to wit, a schlemiel is somebody who often spills his soup and a schlimazel is the person it lands on. Note: Schmegoogle is not always a pejorative. In the Talmud, the person who does good deeds while making sure that no one knows about it or who he is, is considered a moral prince.

n. Facebook posts of trivial and/or boring content.

All he writes about on Facebook is what he had for breakfasttotal faceboopkes .

Faceboopkes is derived from the Yiddish word boopkes or bupkes , meaning trivial, a ridiculously small amount, or absolutely nothing at all; as in, So I hired this fancy new tax accountant, but what did he save me? Bupkes ! Bupkes came into Yiddish from Polish, in which it means goat or horse droppings, though goat droppings actually are worth something if you are in the fertilizer business.

n. A humorous post on Facebook, usually to garner likes from Facebook friends.

Aaron posted the old Henny Youngman Take my wife routine for his morning Facebook entry. That faceshtick is so old and backward, the last time I heard it I fell off my dinosaur.

Granted it is hard to be truly funny these days when everyone fancies themselves a stand-up comic, but the sorry state of many of these humorous posts is mind-boggling. Almost as mind-boggling as the number of people who feel compelled to click on like.

From the Yiddish shtick , meaning a funny routine or gimmick. As in this faceshtick thigh-slapper: I had soy bacon for breakfast. Oy, what I do for my mother!

adj. Quality of a person whose tweets are over-the-top and self-serving.

Mickey just tweeted that he is only one vote short of winning this years Nobel Prize in economics. The man cant even balance his checkbook. Its just more of Mickeys tweetzpah .

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said, All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down. Imagine the worlds gyrations if the famously self- involved iconoclast had been able to tweet. Tweetzpah !

Derived from the Yiddish