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1. Chaloshes Becomes Hallucious

Two sample sentences from New York City:

“To listen to Sarah Palin trying to complete any complex English sentence? A chaloshes.”

“Oy! That off-Broadway musical comedy based on Sillman’s Anatomy for Coroners? A chaloshes!”

Hallucious is a New York City adjective used chiefly by Jews who know a little or no Yiddish. An Anglo-Yiddish put-down adjective, immediately derived from the Polish Yiddish noun chaloshes (pronounced) kha-loo-shess. (Litvak Yiddish: khol-LAW-shess), its basic meaning: any thing vomit-making, utterly disgusting, loathsome. The original Yiddish expression is “a chaloshes.”

The ultimate root is probably the Hebrew verb le-hallakan “to faint.” But more recently influenced by holosh Hebrew ‘faint’ and its Yiddish form where it means ‘weak.’ The proper Yiddish adjective from the noun chaloshes is chaloshisdik, (kha-LOOSH-iz-dik) ‘revolting, sickening’ but New York Jews who knew only a little Yiddish heard chaloshes as an adjective and began to spell it as an English adjective: hallucious. Hallucious is an adjective now spreading in American showbiz slang as a synonym for anything artistic that is shlocky.

Khalish (Hebrew holosh ‘faint’) is often used today to mean ‘faint from hunger.’

NYC: “If she doesn’t bring the knishes soon, I’m gona khalish.”

 

 

2. Tchotchke

and its even more dismissive diminutive: tchotchkeleh

 

Yiddish טשאַטשקעtshatshke

Referring to a thing in Yiddish: Gewgaw, trinket, useless unimportant thing, a child’s plaything or toy

Example:

A bobblehead doll of George W. Bush would be a tchotchke. I had an aunt who said anything you put away in a closet so no one will ever know you bought such a thing is a tchotchke. There can be, in the meaning of the word, an element of owner’s shame.

In Yiddish, a tchotchke may refer to a person who is a misfit, a nobody, a slut, an ineffectual person.

 

Email from a Reader September 15, 2009 Dear Bill: I was having a discussion with a friend about the etymology of some Yiddish words. Tchochke came up. I postulated that the etymology is actually the Hebrew word for toys which is "tsa'atsuim", since in modern Hebrew the same letter for the "ts" sound (a tzadeh followed by a /'/ is used for the western sound of "tch", for which there is no Hebrew equivalent. After the discussion, I immediately went to Google and found your site. I found your conclusion to be persuasive, but am wondering whether you had any comments on my suggestion? Norman Shapiro Bill Casselman replies - - - Norman – Yes! My comment is: your suggestion is cogent and interesting! Hebrew ->Yiddish Glottal Stops In another email, Norman shows that many intervocalic glottal stops in Hebrew words are elided for speed and ease of pronnciation when those words are borrowed into Yiddish. For example, the Hebrew word for ‘troubles’ is צרות  plural tsa'aroth, but became tsores or tzuris in Yiddish. Norman shows a glottal stop in the Hebrew, whereas some Hebrew dictionaries do not show a glottal stop in the word and show the voicing as tsarot ‘troubles. In any case, the Hebrew triliteral root is /ts-r-r/ whose basic meaning is ‘become narrow’ (said of opportunity or fate, hence the developed meaning of ‘aggravations.’ One commentator wrote “tsuris is about aggravation. Something that’s vexing you at the moment, a pain in the butt that you hope will go away.”   bc

 

Various Etymologies

Some authorities say the Russian root of this common Yiddish word is the Slavic verb shalet “to play pranks.” Others claim it entered Yiddish through an obsolete Polish word, czaczko ‘knickknack.’ Still others state the source as the Russian noun tsatska ‘cheap, showy costume jewelry (?).

Maybe. But I don’t think so.

I think tchotchke is a borrowing into Yiddish from a legitimate Russian noun.

Chotki is a plural form that means ‘beads,’ originally clear glass beads from the Russian adjective chotki ‘clear, legible.’

In Russian, chotki is also a way to refer to a Russian Orthodox rosary. In that elaborated sense, chotki can be plainly descriptive, that is, a rosary is a chain of beads. But it may also be used pejoratively of the rosary as a sacrilegious dismissal: “a bunch of beads.”

I think there is a Yiddish putdown of something Christian in the borrowing of this word for an Orthodox religious object into Yiddish where its general sense is negative. Since knowledge of the Russian root of the term was never widespread in Yiddish, I don’t think the word’s continued use in Yiddish is some dark plot either. So, on this word’s history, anti-semites can take a hike.

 

 

3. Tchainik

 Hak mir kein tchainik.

Alternate: Hak mir nicht in tchainik.

From the Russian word for ‘teapot’

From Russian chai = tea

 

Its range of meanings encompasses English phrases like:

Don’t get on my nerves.

Literally: Don’t bang my teapot.

Don’t make a big fuss.

 

In Russian a tchainik (literally ‘teapot’) is also a little café where one can sip tea. Here’s a picture of a chainik by a lake near Novgorod in Russia. Note the giant wooden teapot on the roof of the little teahouse.

A boat station and tchainik café in Valdai

 

 

4. Shpilkes

Yiddish plural noun, literally “pins”

First meaning: “on pins and needles,” an unpleasant nervousness before an event

Example:
“Your daughter, bless her, a natural-born performer? She had shpilkes two weeks before the rehearsal!”

 

The word entered Yiddish from Polish szpilka ‘pin’ and from Russian shpelka ‘hairpin,’ ‘tack,’or ‘little pivot.’

Nowadays it can mean “upset stomach,” “feeling antsy,” or “impatience.”

 

That's it for today. I'm goying home now.

© 2008 William Gordon Casselman

 

 

 

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