[Ads-l] "Eephus" origin -- Hebrew "efes"? Yiddish "eppis"?

[Ben Zimmer]

I wrote about "eephus" in a 2021 WSJ column:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/eephus-a-nothing-of-a-name-for-aperplexing-pitch-11619841660?st=2QJQWu&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
(archived: https://archive.is/PwYwK)

As I say there, there's no evidence that Maurice Van Robays, Rip Sewell, or
anyone else on that Pirates team knew any Hebrew. I'm not sure if Nancy's
proposed Yiddish derivation is more plausible -- I don't recall seeing that
mentioned when I researched the column.

I also note earlier uses of "eephus" that suggest a different route into
baseball usage:

---
The term seemed to first take off in the San Francisco Bay area, a hotbed
of slang in the early 20th century. In June 1925, it appeared in the San
Francisco Examiner meaning "the inside dope" ("here's the eephus"). Then it
showed up in the paper a month later in a baseball reference -- a slangy
take on the Seals, the city’s minor-league ball club: "We all wished you
was here so you could've joined the customers in giving the athalete the
old razz-matazz, which is a way of saying the 'eephus.'"
A few years later, a young pitcher named Lefty Gomez debuted with the
Seals. He went on to pitch for the New York Yankees and took the "eephus"
slang with him, though not applied to a specific throw. In 1935, he used
the term for an ineffable ingredient in a pitching performance: "Eephus is
that little extry you have on your good days," Gomez said.
---

Links to cited articles:
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-san-francisco-examiner-heres-the-ee/76165100/
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-san-francisco-examiner-eephus/76165425/
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-salt-lake-tribune-eephus-lefty-gom/76164829/

--bgz

On Fri, Mar 14, 2025 at 4:54 PM Nancy Friedman <wordworking at gmail.com>
wrote:

> The new feature film "Eephus <https://www.eephusfilm.com/>" takes its
> title
> from a quirky baseball pitch that MLB.com says "is known for its
> exceptionally low speed and ability to catch a hitter off guard." MLB
> asserts that the word was coined by Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Maurice
> Van Robays (1914-1965), who is alleged to have said: "Eephus ain't nothing,
> and that's a nothing pitch." MLB continues: "In Hebrew, the word 'efes' can
> be loosely translated into 'nothing,' and the word 'eephus' undoubtedly
> stems from that."
>
> Undoubtedly?
>
> My Hebrew is rusty, but I know that *efes* is literally, not loosely,
> "nothing" or "zero." What I can't figure out is how Mr. Van Robays would
> have known about it. A few Yiddish terms, like *shamus* (private
> detective), were circulating among non-Jews in the 1930s and 1940s -- but
> Hebrew? In major league baseball?
>
> Here's a fanciful tangent: Could *eephus *have come instead from Yiddish
> *eppis*: "a little something" (from German *etwas*)? (The Yiddish
> equivalent of Hebrew *efes *is *nul.*)
>
> Any leads from this knowledgeable group?
>
> https://www.mlb.com/glossary/pitch-types/eephus
>
>

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