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A person having admirable characteristics, such as fortitude and firmness of purpose: “He radiates the kind of fundamental decency that has a name in Yiddish; he's a mensch” (James Atlas).
[Yiddish, human being, mensch, from Middle High German, human being, from Old High German mennisco.]
It's not only Yiddish speakers who are advised to be a mensch, act like a mensch and associate with mensches — the word has made its way into mainstream English. It is used to great effect by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman:
"'Be a mensch,' my parents told me. Literally, a mensch is a person. But by implication, a mensch is an upstanding person who takes responsibility for his actions.
The people now running America aren't mensches."
Link: The Mensch Gap
Posted February 21, 2006.
See our Word Overheard blog to see interesting uses of strange words. 
Mensch (Yiddish מענטש; also mentsch, mentsh, mensh, or mench, plural: mentschen, German plural: Menschen) is a German noun meaning a "human".
In Yiddish (from which the word has migrated into American English), mensch roughly means "a good person." A "mensch" is a particularly good person, like "a stand-up guy," a person with the qualities one would hope for in a dear friend or trusted colleague. According to author and Yiddish popularist Leo Rosten,
[A] mensch is someone to admire and emulate, someone of noble character. The key to being "a real mensch" is nothing less than character, rectitude, dignity, a sense of what is right, responsible, decorous. (Rosten, Leo. 1968. The Joys of Yiddish. New York: Pocket Books. 237)
Mentschlekhkeyt (Yiddish: מענטשלעכקייט) are the properties which make one a mensch.
The correct German spellings are Mensch (singular, meaning (non-judgmental) human or man), Menschen (for the plural and for the singular accusative) and Menschlichkeit ("humanity").
In Modern Israeli Hebrew, the phrase Ben Adam is used as an exact translation of Mensch. Though it usually means simply "a person" in general, it is used to mean "a nice guy" in the same way as mensch.
The direct opposite of a Mensch is an Unmensch (meaning: an utterly cruel or evil person).
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Word Overheard. © 1999-2008 by Answers Corporation. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Obscure Words. © 2008 by Michael A. Fischer http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Mensch". Read more |
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