Yiddish in UK English (anecdotal)

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>>  >From my experience in the the military, I can testify that, in
>>colloquial German, too, and not only in Yiddish, "schmuck" means
>>"penis," as in, e.g. "Der Schmuck ist starr," a phrase that often fell
>>trippingly from the lips of b-girls I've read somewhere or other that
>>the semantic point is that the male genitalia "decorate" or
>>"compliment" or "complement" or "complete" their bearer's manhood or
>>manliness or something along those lines.
>
>I've always understood it as the same idea as the "family jewels"
>metaphor, although there's only one such jewel involved in the
>German/Yiddish case.

I guess there is some question about the origin of "schmuck". I've
seen the Yiddish word written "shmok" etc. which comports fairly well
with the pronunciation /SmVk/ in English, not so well with German
"Schmuck" /SmUk/ or so (we have "schnook" in English, why not
"schmook" if it's German "Schmuck"?). Of course I don't know bobkes
from Yiddish or any other language, but just maybe the general German
slang "Schmuck" was from Yiddish rather than vice versa ... and
assimilated to "Schmuck" = "ornament". I see Croatian "s^mokljan" (s^
= s-with-hacek) = "blockhead" etc., possibly from the Yiddish, or
from some Slavic origin ....

One candidate etymon of Yiddish "shmok" = "penis" is old Polish
"smok" = "dragon"/"snake" (in MW3). Currently I see Polish "smok" =
"dragon". Also Byelorussian "tsmok". These would be expected to be
/SmOk/ or so in German/Yiddish, I think?

-- Doug Wilson


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