Schlumps and schleppers
When it comes to insults, few languages can compete with Yiddish.
In this wonderfully evocative language, even something as simple as the English equivalent ‘fool’ can be said to be a shmutte, a schlump, a nar, a tam, a tipesh, a bulvan, a shoyte, a peysi, a kuni lemel, a lekish, or even a shmenge.
Not content with these, however, the language can get ever more specific. While we’d be content at labelling somebody a fool and getting on with our lives, Yiddish has a word for every type of fool under the sun. If you find yourself being called a schlepper, a shmugeggeshnorrer, a paskudnik, a pisher, a yold or a no-goodnik; you’re simply being labelled a loser. A klutz is a clumsy, oafish bungler and a lekish ber schlemiel is a fool without luck. A fool who is not just stupid but also inept is a schlimazel, and a farshpiler is one who has lost all his money gambling. The saddest of all is perhaps the nisrof, the ‘burnt-out fool’.
Other useful (and similarly wonderful-sounding) insults in Yiddish include:
Nebbish: a nobody
Nudnick: a boring person who doesn’t shut up
Putz: a simpleton
Shlub: a clumsy and ill-mannered person
Shmegegge: a foolish, sycophantic person (cf. ‘suck-up’)
Shmendrick: a timid person who might as well not be there
Shnook: a pleasant but gullible person
Got any more?