Shmendrik
Shmendrik (Yiddish: שמענדריק), also rendered as schmendrick or shmendrick is a Yiddish word meaning a stupid person or a little hapless jerk ("a pathetic sad sack"[1]). Its origin is the name of a clueless mama's boy played by Sigmund Mogulesko in Abraham Goldfaden's 1877 comedy Shmendrik, oder di komishe Chaseneh (Schmendrik or The Comical Wedding) .[2][3] The play was inspired by a sketch Mogulesko performed at an audition before Goldfaden.[citation needed] Since then the word has often been used as a name in works of Jewish humor.
The Joys of Yiddish lexicon stresses the meagerness of "shmendrik" compared to other Jewish schm-words for luckless persons: "A shmendrik is a small, short, weak, thin, a young nebekh". This is directly opposite to mentsh (more commonly spelled "mensch") which means a "real" man of upstanding character.[4][5]
Notable usages
[edit]- Shmendrik, oder di komishe Chaseneh, original usage
- Shmendrick is a "wise Man of Chelm" in the 1999 Canadian animated comedy Village of Idiots
- Schmendrick the Magician, wizard from the fantasy novel The Last Unicorn, which was made into an animated film and had a sequel, Two Hearts. The author, Peter S. Beagle, said he took the name from the Yiddish term, which he described as "somebody out of his depth, the boy sent to do a man's job, someone who has expanded to the limits of his incapacity".[6]
- Shosshi Schmendrik is a socially awkward, shy carpenter in the 1899 play Children of the Ghetto
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ↑ Etiquette for Schmucks, Schlemiels, Schlimazels and Schmendriks, Forward, May 12, 2010
- ↑ shmendrik, Jewish English Lexicon
- ↑ schmendrick, Oxford English Dictionary
- ↑ The Joys of Yiddish: p. 353
- ↑ Michael Wex, How to Be a Mentsh (And Not a Shmuck), 2009
- ↑ Beagle, Peter S. (2007). The Last Unicorn. Deluxe Edition. New York: Roc Books. ISBN 978-0-7607-8374-0