Yiddish in UK English (anecdotal)

[Amy West]

Notionally related is "Beutel" meaning "bag, purse" or "scrotum."
It's significant in the 1500s "novel" Fortunatus: the protagonist is
given a bottomless bag of money by a hag (I think) and that's a key
plot element.

---Amy West

>Date:    Sun, 21 Oct 2007 17:35:20 -0400
>From:    Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>Subject: Re: Yiddish in UK English (anecdotal)
>
>>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 used to vaguely wonder
>whether one could buy decorative representations of the penis at a
>Schmueckerei.
>
>-Wilson

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