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Signposts to the Middle of Nowhere

By Philologos

Neal Gale writes from St. Paul, Minn.: “My parents, both American-born Yiddish/English speakers, would use two words that referred to places that were hard to find or get to: ‘Yah-Chupetz-Ville’ and ‘Allah-Drerden.’ What do these words really mean?”Read More

A Big-Headed Dandy

By Philologos

Bernard Weill writes: “I have often heard the Yiddish word ‘shvitzer’ applied to someone but have been too embarrassed to ask what it meant. Is it a derogatory term?”Read More

Don’t Talk to the Hand

By Philologos

Leon Kass writes: “Perhaps you can help me with the origin of the Yiddish expression redn tsu der vant, to talk to the wall. Many languages may have such an expression to indicate the futility of efforts to persuade by speech or to gain a hearing for one’s thoughts. But given what became the secularist Yiddish contest with Orthodoxy, is there any chance that, in Yiddish, redn tsu der vant might have started as an anti-religious crack about the efficacy of prayer at the Western Wall?”Read More

Named for a Rapist?

By Philologos

An e-mailer signing herself as only “Phyllis” asks, “Why is the flower that we call a pansy known as amnon v’tamar in Hebrew?”Read More

Deep Panning

By Philologos

Dick Luxner sent me an e-mail in which he inquires whether I know anyone who can read 16th-century Catalan (I don’t), and ended with the P.S.: “Can you confirm my thought that the ‘pan’ in the phrase I remember from my childhood, ‘Wipe that smile off your pan,’ comes from the Yiddish word for face, ponim? And why would a singular noun have a plural ending?”Read More


 

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