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When Miss Poubelle was in Germany this summer, she was amused to see a large sign in front of a store in downtown Konstanz reading "schmuck." What kind of jerk put that up, she wondered? Schmuck is mostly familiar to speakers of American English as term for "dope, jerk, idiot, contemptible person." So why a sign that seems to say "jerk" outside the store?

Schmuck comes into English through Yiddish, and still has the sound of a Yiddishism. Ordinary English words don't start with "sh" followed by a consonant, so words like schmuck, schmooze, shlep, schmeer, and shvitz all have a special Jewish sound to them. (Sometimes they are spelled with "sch-" and sometimes "sh-," though they all have the same pronunciation.)

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iddish was, of course, the language of millions of European Jews before the World War II. As a result of the anti-Semitic violence of the 20th century, most Yiddish speakers in Europe either were killed or immigrated to places like North America, Israel, and Australia. The number of speakers has been in decline ever since, though there are still ongoing and valiant efforts to preserve Yiddish language and culture today. (One of Miss Poubelle's friends contributes to the effort by playing in a lesbian Klezmer band called Isle of Klezbos!)

Schmuck in English is first attested in 1892 in the following quote from Israel Zangwill: "Becky's private refusal to entertain the addresses of such a Shmuck." However, citations of schmuck in English really do not become frequent till after about 1940, when it and other Yiddish words were introduced to English speakers by Jewish comedians and entertainers.

Yiddish is a Germanic language, and its vocabulary has many words in common with German. Schmuck is a word in both Yiddish and German, but with rather different meanings. In German, Schmuck means "jewel" but in Yiddish it has two meanings. One is "penis" and the other is "jerk."

Leo Rosten's book The Joys of Yiddish has a story that neatly shows both meanings of schmuck. In abbreviated form, it runs like this:

Lefkowitz is a lonely widower in Miami Beach who decides he needs to make friends and get more attention from the ladies. An acquaintance advises him that he can solve his problem by getting a camel and riding it up and down the street. Lefkowitz looks in the paper, sees that a circus is in town, and rents a camel. He rides up and down the street on the camel, attracting an enormous crowds of gawkers.

The next day, however, he discovers that the rented camel has been stolen and calls the police. They ask him to describe the camel-- its color, height, and sex.

"What do I know about the sex of a camel?!" cries Lefkowitz. "Wait! Aha! It was a male!"

"How do you know?"

"I'm positive officer, because I just remembered. Because when I was riding up and down the street, I kept hearing people yelling, 'Hey, look at the schmuck on that camel!'"

So Yiddish schmuck is like English "dick" or "prick" in that it names both the penis and a contemptible person. In many languages, words for "penis" end up being extended as insults. (As do words for the vagina-- consider cunt, twat, and pussy in English or con in French.)

The other connection to be made is between German Schmuck "jewel" and Yiddish schmuck "penis." The connection is similar to English family jewels, referring to a man's genitals, especially the testicles. This probably originates as an ironic or humorous description, but_ has become conventionalized with this meaning.

So the etymological route for schmuck is from "treasured thing" to "penis" to "jerk." Or put a bit more broadly, from money to the penis to stupidity. Isn't that a route that many of us have taken?