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Look up schmuck in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
Schmuck is most often used in American English as a pejorative or insult, meaning an obnoxious or contemptible person; one who is stupid, foolish, or detestable.
Variants of spelling and alterations include shmuck, schmo and shmo.
Schmuck entered English as a borrowed pejorative from the common Yiddish insult, where it is an obscene term for penis.[1] Its etymology is uncertain. In his cultural lexicon, The Joys of Yiddish, Leo Rosten lists the Yiddish schmuck as related to the Slovene word, šmok, meaning "a fool, an innocent, a gullible dolt."[verification needed] The Online Etymology Dictionary derives it from the Polish word smok for dragon, as a euphemism for "penis".[2]
In German language the word refers to jewelry, a trinket or a brooch, but is unrelated to the yiddish word.
See also
schmohawk!
References
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