maven

A person who has special knowledge or experience; an expert.

[Yiddish meyvn, from Hebrew mēbîn, active participle of hēbîn, to understand.]

What's the word for a know-it-all who really knows it all? We didn't have one until Yiddish gave us maven in the mid-twentieth century. A maven is more adept than a mere expert, more authoritative than a mere authority, sharper than a pundit, more up-to-date than a past master.

Since the word was introduced to English (with attestations going back to 1952), we have been blessed with a multitude of mavens. Leo Rosten, in his popular The Joys of Yiddish (1968), gave the example of a herring maven dreamed up by an advertising maven. Nowadays you can find a sports maven, a political maven, a public relations maven, a principle-driven policy maven; a stock market maven, a cruise maven, a gift maven; a movie maven, a sci-fi maven, even a local historic legal maven. There is software known as File Maven, a computer buying guide (by Business Week) called Maven, and Maven self-help videos for women. We hear of computer maven Liam Howlett, figure skating maven Christine Brennan, etiquette maven Letitia Baldrige. There is Gary Ouellet, the maven of magic, and Philip E. Schoenberg, Ph.D., Professional Speaker, Author, and Motivator, who bills himself as Dr. Phil, the Jewish Maven. And on the Internet you will find Maven, the Virtual Know-It-All: a searchable newsletter for information and resources related to Jewish culture and Israel.

Regrettably, this word was not in the English language when Edgar Allan Poe wrote his most famous poem. He would have found it useful: "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou, I said, art sure no maven, Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore."

English should be so lucky to get words from Yiddish! And what a heap we've had in the twentieth century: noshing on bagels, blintzes, borscht, knishes, latke, and lox; schmoozing, kibitzing, or kvetching with klutzes, nudniks, nebbishes, schlemiels, or mensches; schlepping and putzing, carrying a big shtick with meshuga chutzpah. Or something like that.

Though it is written with the Hebrew alphabet, Yiddish is an Indo-European language closely related to German. The majority of Yiddish words in English share a common origin with German, but some were borrowed from Hebrew, including maven as well as chutzpah, meshuga, schlemiel, and schmooze. Until the Holocaust, the greatest number of Yiddish speakers were in central and eastern Europe. Today there are estimated to be about one and a half million speakers of Yiddish in the United States, another two hundred thousand in Israel, and still another two hundred thousand in Russia and other states of the former Soviet Union.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: someone who is dazzlingly skilled in any field
  Synonyms: ace, adept, sensation, virtuoso, genius, hotshot, star, whiz, whizz, wizard, wiz

For other uses, see Maven (disambiguation).

A maven (also mavin) is a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass knowledge on to others. The word maven comes from the Hebrew, via Yiddish, and means one who understands, based on an accumulation of knowledge.^{[citation needed]}

History

The word comes from the Yiddish meyvn and Hebrew mevin (מבֿין), with the same meaning, which in turn derives from the Hebrew binah, meaning understanding. It was first recorded in English around 1952, and popularized in the 1960s by a series of commercials for Vita Herring created by Martin Solow, featuring "The Beloved Herring Maven." The “Beloved Herring Maven“ ran in radio ads from 1964-1968, and was then brought back in 1983 with Allan Swift, the original voice of the Maven.^[1]

Many sites credit Vita with popularizing the word Maven. An example of print advertisement including the Maven: "Get Vita at your favorite supermarket, grocery or delicatessen. Tell them the beloved Maven sent you. It won’t save you any money, but you’ll get the best herring".^[2]

Since the 1980s it has become more common since William Safire adapted it to describe himself as "the language maven". The word is mainly confined to American English, but had not yet appeared with the publication of the 1976 edition of Webster's Third New International Dictionary.

In network theory and sociology, a maven is someone who has a disproportionate influence on other members of the network. The role of mavens in propagating knowledge and preferences has been established in various domains, from politics to social trends.

Usage

Malcolm Gladwell used it in his book The Tipping Point (Little Brown, 2000) to describe those who are intense gatherers of information and impressions, and so are often the first to pick up on new or nascent trends. The popularity of the work of Safire and Gladwell has made the word widely used in their particular contexts. Gladwell also suggests that mavens may act most effectively when in collaboration with connectors - i.e., those people who have wide network of casual acquaintances by whom they are trusted, often a network that crosses many social boundaries and groups. Connectors can thus easily and widely distribute the advice or insights of a maven.

In the afterword of The Tipping Point, Gladwell described a "maven trap" as a method of obtaining information from mavens. In the book he gave the example of the toll-free telephone number on the back of a bar of Ivory soap, which one could call with questions or comments about the product. Gladwell's opinion is that only those who are passionate or knowledgeable about soap would bother to call and that this is a method by which the company could inexpensively glean valuable information about their market.

In the book The Human Fabric (Aviri, 2004), Bijoy Goswami uses the term to describe one of three core energies in people, organizations and society.

Several informational websites use "maven", such as www.thefoodmaven.com[1] and www.piemaven.com[2].

References

Look up Maven in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

1. ^ "Beloved Herring Maven is Returning to Solow"
2. ^ advt. in Hadassah News Letter, April 30, 1965

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