tchotchkes

[Laurence Horn]

At 4:18 PM -0600 2/28/00, Tom Kysilko wrote:
>Andrea wrote:
>> For a pejorative Yiddish term for cheap
>>trinkets/souvenirs/gee-gaws, I would use "schlock".
>
>There's also "shmatte".  The word is probably not so well-known as schlock,
>but it was put by the writers of M*A*S*H (the TV show) into the mouth of
>Hawkeye Pierce in one episode.
>
Isn't "shmatte" more like 'rags', i.e. for clothes in not particularly mint
condition?

Larry (with no Yiddish dictionary handy, forced to rely on his somewhat
meager passive competence)