Yidbits - At Home in Yiddishland

This Vortsman thing is starting to take off. Readers may decide whether that's a good thing. The Vortsman isn't sure.

Anyway, here are some questions received through Yiddishkayt, plus another sent to the Vortsman at his undisclosed location.

Q. How do you say "heebie jeebies" or "gave me the creeps" in Yiddish?

A. "Heebie-jeebies" is a slang coinage from the comic strip "Barney Google." Since that strip was neither read nor Googled in old Yiddishland, and no longer exists in our few remaining newspapers, there's no Yiddish equivalent. On the other hand, the coinage is, itself, redundant, having the same meaning as "the creeps"...which is a slang form of the expression, "made my skin crawl."

Ta-dah! There is a direct Yiddish equivalent of the latter. s'iz af mir gekrokhn di hoyt is good Standard Yiddish, reflective of the fact that humans of whatever language-group have the same reaction to creepy things. Which explains why Hollywood keeps churning out those stupid movies...

Q. How did tshuve come to mean "reply" in Yiddish, while teshuva means "repentance" in Hebrew? Is it some sort of guilt thing? Like every reply is an apology?

A. Actually, the dual meaning exists in Hebrew. Yiddish clarified the difference by making tshuve a noun: answer, reply, explanation. It is the compound verb tshuve ton that means to "do penance." (He repented -- er hot tshuve geton.)

Q. Is there a male equivalent for the word yente?

A.To understand why there isn't a direct equivalent, you must know the origin of the present meaning of yente.

Until less than a century ago, Yente was an honorable Yiddish woman's name, derived from the Old Spanish gentile (hen-tee-ley), meaning gentle. Then, a humor column began to appear on occasion in the Yiddish daily forverts (Forward) about a busybody whose name was Yente and whose invented, rhyming last name was Telebende. Quickly, Yente Telebende became the slang title for interfering busybodies and/or gossips and, eventually, it was shortened to yente by Yinglish speakers who knew nothing of the name's previous history - or much of anything else about Yiddish, for that matter. (Their ilk proliferates on the internet, sending out tons of allegedly "funny Yiddish jokes.")

A male pain-in-the-neck (or lower) is designated as a dreykop (head-twister).

A male busybody is a kokhlefl (stirring spoon). A rare masculine term for gossiping is motlen -- perhaps related to the name Motl. Or not.
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