by Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe

William Safire passed away, but his "On Language" columns in The New York Times
will be remembered by his many readers.

Safire wrote about "vocabugap"--a word he was forced to coin today to describe the
situations in our lives for which we have no English word--and have to turn to a foreign
language for lexical expansion.

He said [1994], "People who are unwilling to try new words are the type who refrain
from dunking doughnuts."

Hence I give you Safire's Top 10 Yiddish Words:

1.  "shtarker"     Strong-minded person willing to wield
      power

2.  "schlep"   To pull; to drag.  Dunkin' Donuts urged customers to try its new bagels through the use of billboards reading:  "It is worth the schlep."

3.  "schmooze"  To chat.  "High Schmooze," a film and TV  term, represents a Hollywood event with a high proportion of "players" in attendance.

4.  "tchotchke"  A trinket or knick-knack. Barbra Streisand  [Look magazine, 1969], talks about her thrift shop goodies, her art works, and her favorite things:  "I'm a slave to all my tchotchkes."
 
5.  "tochis"/"tokhes" - the buttocks. Safire wrote that "there are vast swaths of the nation where nobody knows atochis from a tchotchke.  Growing up in the flyover, I learned the English word tush, "nonsense" - immortalized in the "Mikado" character Pish Tush - long before I was introduced to tushies."   David Bader ("Haikus for Jews"), wrote,
       Yenta.....  Schmeer.  Gevalt.
       Shlemiel.  Shlimazl.  Tochis.
       Oy!  To be fluent!

6.  "meshuggeneh"  Crazy.  Jackie Mason writes, "A man sees John Gotti about to park his car in a space, and then decides to beat him to it.  That's real meshuggener ("How to Talk Jewish")

     meshugener (m), meshegenah (f):  A  loony.  Whether he thinks his underwear
     is after him or barrels over Niagara Falls, he's one letter short of an M&M.("The Yiddish Dictionary of Fools" by Marnie Winston-Macauley)

7.  "mishegoss"/"meshugas"  Mad, insane, a piece of tomfoolery. Barbra Streisand, in a 1977 Playboy interview, spoke about being in grouptherapy.  "I'm finding out about life, talking to people, hearing what they feel and think..  They've got the same meshagoss I do; it has nothing to do with my being an actress.."

8.  "gay vays"  Go know..  "Gay vays that [in 2008] l in 5 of JDaters  say their mother paid for their JDate membership."

9.  "mishpoche"  Family.  Sid Caesar used many Yiddishisms in his skits.  One of his most
     memorable was a Japanese skit called "Gantze Mishpoche."

    Jackie Mason wrotes, "When a friend  asks, 'So how's the family?'  and the Jew answers, 'Don't ask!' he will then tell you anyway--for three hours.  The most dangerous thing for a Jew is one word about the mishpocheh because he's always dying to tell you...If you happen  not to use the word mishpocheh right away, he'll be listening for it for the next hour and a half, because there's no way you can get away from the other Jew, especially if he has two children.  And if one's a doctor, you're there all day." ("How to Talk Jewish")

10. "beygl"   Bagel.  A donut with rigor mortis.  A doughnut dipped in cement.
    
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Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe is the author of two books:  "Yiddish For Dog & Cat Lovers"
and "Are Yentas, Kibitzers, & Tummlers Weapons of Mass Instruction?  Yiddish
Trivia."