It's a Nativity scene, you putz!

[Mark A Mandel]

On Wed, 3 Apr 2002, Alice Faber wrote:

#On Wednesday, April 3, 2002, at 05:33  PM, FRITZ JUENGLING wrote:
#>              However, in Minnesota, I learned
#> another meaning: to diddle daddle around, as in "Tomorrow, I'm gonna just
#> putz around the the house."  I had assumed it was from German 'putzen' to
#> clean.
#
#Hmmm. That sounds to me like a blend of "putter" and "futz".

I'd always assumed it was from Yiddish, or Yinglish, but with no
evidence.

Could it be related to "patzer" (with "a" of "father") 'a poor chess
player'?  AHD4 says "Probably from German, bungler, from patzen, to
bungle." I'm not suggesting
        *(putz [vb.] < Eng. patzer)
but maybe
        putz < Ger. patzen

-- Mark M.