"break <someone's> eggs"

[Mark Mandel]

Right youse are, Larry & Victor. I have no idea whether "ey" was/is used in
Yiddish for "testicle" (I just checked Weinreich's dictionary: it has only
"beitse" for "testicle", and only "egg" for "ey"). So this bubbe may have
been making a trilingual pun.

m a m

On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 9:11 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

> At 6:45 PM -0400 8/8/10, Victor Steinbok wrote:
> >  I am a couple of generations removed from Yiddish speakers in my
> >family (contributing to the death of a language, as it were), but I
> >distinctly recall references to "beitzim", which, if I am not mistaken,
> >is an Ivritism in Yiddish (one of many that deal with ... uhm ...
> >sensitive issues). This could be a dialectal difference or simple taboo
> >layering.
> >
> >     VS-)
>
> It is, in any case, it's beitzim that are the entities such that if
> my bubbe had them she'd be my zayde.
> (i.e. if my grandma had balls, she'd be my grandpa, the Yiddish
> version of "If wishes were horses, beggars would fly")
>
> LH
>
> >
> >On 8/8/2010 5:47 PM, Mark Mandel wrote:
> >>Yiddish also. I recall hearing about someone's (grandma?) who, on hearing
> >>that someone had been classified 1A by the draft board (i.e., completely
> >>qualified to be drafted into the Army) and quipped (imagine a heavy
> Yiddish
> >>accent) "How can they take him into the Army with just one ey?" -- lit.
> >>'egg', slang 'testicle' (testis? I didn't ask my grandma).
> >>
> >>Mark
> >
> >------------------------------------------------------------
> >The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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