Schlumps and schleppers

mono-zoo_19-138010When 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?