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List of English words of Yiddish origin

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For Yiddish words used in English, particularly in the U.S., see Yiddish words used in English.
"Kvetch" redirects here. For the play, see Kvetch (play).

This is a list of words that have entered the English language from the Yiddish language, many of them by way of American English. There are differing approaches to the romanization of Yiddish orthography (which uses the Hebrew alphabet); thus, the spelling of some of the following words may be variable (for example, shlep is a variant of schlep, and shnozz, schnoz).

Many of these words are more common in the American entertainment industry (initially via vaudeville), the Catskills/Borscht Belt, and New York City English. A number of Yiddish words also entered English via large Jewish communities in Britain, particularly London, where Yiddish has influenced Cockney English.

Background

Yiddish is a Germanic language, originally spoken by the Jews of Central and later Eastern Europe, written in the Hebrew alphabet, and containing a substantial substratum of words from Hebrew as well as numerous loans from Slavic languages.[1] For that reason, some of the words listed below are in fact of Hebrew or Slavic origin, but have entered English via their Yiddish forms.

Since Yiddish is very closely related to modern German, many native Yiddish words have close German cognates; in a few cases it is difficult to tell whether English borrowed a particular word from Yiddish or from German. Since Yiddish was originally written using the Hebrew alphabet, some words have several spellings in the Latin alphabet. The transliterated spellings of Yiddish words and conventional German spellings are different, but the pronunciations are frequently the same (e.g., Template:Lang-yi in Yiddish is pronounced the same way as Template:Lang-de in German).

Many of these words have slightly different meanings and usages in English from their Yiddish originals. For example, chutzpah is usually used in Yiddish with a negative connotation, meaning improper audacity, while in English it has a more positive meaning. In Yiddish, Template:Lang-yi is usually used as a transitive verb for carrying (or dragging) something else, while the English term, "schlep", is also used as an intransitive verb, for dragging oneself. In Yiddish, Template:Lang-yi means "slip", while the English form, "glitch", means malfunction.

List of words

These English words of Yiddish origin, except as noted, are in the online editions of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (AHD), or the Merriam-Webster dictionary (MW). The parentheses-enclosed information at the end of each word's entry starts with the original Yiddish term in Hebrew script, the Latin script transliteration, and the literal English translation (if different than the English definition given earlier). This may be followed by additional relevant languages (mostly Hebrew and German). One or more dictionary references appear at the end.

Bagel
Blintzes
Gelt
Knish
Latkes


B

C

D


F

G

H

K

L

M

N

O

P

S

T

Carrot tzimmes with honey

V

Yarmulke

Y

Z

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "Bartleby.com: Great Books Online – Quotes, Poems, Novels, Classics and hundreds more". www.bartleby.com. Archived from the original on 16 October 2007.
  2. ^ Horwitz, Bert (19 August 2005). "A Hill of Bupkis". The Jewish Daily Forward. New York. Retrieved 28 November 2010.
  3. ^ See also Wex, Michael. Born to Kvetch. St. Martin's Press, New York, 2005.
  4. ^ Even-Shoshan, Avraham. HaMilon HeHadash (The New Dictionary) (in Hebrew). Kiriat-sefer. ISBN 978-9651701559.
  5. ^ "World Wide Words: The whole megillah". World Wide Words.
  6. ^ Conway, Oliver (22 June 2004). "Congo word 'most untranslatable'". BBC News. Retrieved 7 August 2010.
  7. ^ Carr, David, "Abramson’s Exit at The Times Puts Tensions on Display", The New York Times, May 18, 2014. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
  8. ^ Mottel Baleston, "Common Yiddish Words", The Messianic Association website
  9. ^ a b Jeffrey Goldberg, "Words That The New York Times Will Not Print", The Atlantic, 2010-06-09. "'Joe Lieberman is too polite to complain, but the Gore questions are getting to be a pain in the tuchis.' ... Though Leibovich's copy editors allowed tuchus to be spelled incorrectly, the Washington Post is obviously more tolerant of Jewish flamboyance ..."
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