semantic change: chutzpah

[Bernard Kane]

> [Original Message]
> From: Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
 > Date: 7/8/04 2:06:47 PM
> Subject: Re: semantic change: chutzpah
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
>
> On Jul 8, 2004, at 10:50 AM, Jesse Sheidlower wrote, about positive
> "chutzpah":
>
> > It's not a Yiddishism. HDAS includes this as sense 2, with the
> > etymological note that "the positive connotation is an English
> > innovation not found in Yiddish". The first example is 1966, though
> > I have since come across a 1947 example from Milton Klonsky
> > writing in _Commentary._
>
> (sorry that i didn't check HDAS.  that would have required getting up
> from my chair, whereas AHD4 is literally to hand.  i'm bone-lazy.)
>
> well, i say this has to stop!  fifty years of creeping niceness!
> overly good-hearted people are stealing a perfectly good and useful
> word!  what will we call real chutzpah now?  harrumph!
>
> arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu), who doesn't use smileys

Question: Has the derivative adj form "chutzpahdik" made its way
permanently into the E vocabulary? Was widely used a few years back,
applied e.g. to female editors of coated-stock periodicals.

--- Bernard Kane
--- bkane3 at earthlink.net