(Fwd) Re: (Fwd) more on -nik

[GEORGE THOMPSON]

I have been forwarding the posting on Russian influence on American
English to the Russian studies librarian here.  She offers this
thought:

"The way my grandmother used "nudnik" it meant an idiot, although I
suppose it could have meant an annoying idiot, and therefore a nudge.
-nik in  Russian is a diminuative and therefore has either an
affectionate or a denigrating connotation.  For example, "sputnik"
means "fellow traveler" and was used for those who went along with
the Russian Revolution, even if they weren't ecstatically
enthusiastic. Chainik means teapot (chai=tea)."

She was commenting on Larry Horn's message, below:

"No, nudnik is not related to nudity.  I wanted to make sure what the
actual derivation was, although I suspected previous posters
(relating it to "noodge") were basically right.  Here's Ellen Prince,
my expert on all things Yiddish, on -nik:
====================
in slavic it's simply a nominalizing suffix -- makes a noun out of
anything, including a noun -- or so it seems without looking closely, of
course. but we do know sputnik and /tshaynik/ 'teapot', from /tshay/ 'tea'.
ok, in yiddish
it's always an *agent* -- so nudnik (from nudzhen 'annoy'), and a
ton of others less famous in english. now yinglish is clearly
influenced by yiddish (surprise, surprise) in beatnik, refusenik...

(the one exception in yiddish is in fact /tshaynik/ -- and the
standard explanation is that it was taken in toto, not made up in
yiddish of its parts.)"

GAT