List of English words of Yiddish origin


This is a list of words that have entered the English language from the Yiddish language, many of them by way of American English. There are differing approaches to the romanisation of Yiddish orthography and the spelling of some of these words may therefore be variable.
Many of these words are more common in the American entertainment industry, the Catskills/Borscht Belt, and New York City English. A number of Yiddish words also entered English via large Jewish communities in Britain, particularly London, where Yiddish has influenced Cockney English.

Background

Yiddish is a Germanic language, originally spoken by the Jews of Central and later Eastern Europe, written in the Hebrew alphabet, and containing a substantial substratum of words from Hebrew as well as numerous loans from Slavic languages. For that reason, some of the words listed below are in fact of Hebrew or Slavic origin, but have entered English via their Yiddish forms.
Since Yiddish is very closely related to modern German, many native Yiddish words have close German cognates; in a few cases it is difficult to tell whether English borrowed a particular word from Yiddish or from German. Since Yiddish was originally written using the Hebrew alphabet, some words have several spellings in the Latin alphabet. The transliterated spellings of Yiddish words and conventional German spellings are different, but the pronunciations are frequently the same.
Many of these words have slightly different meanings and usages in English from their Yiddish originals. For example, chutzpah is usually used in Yiddish with a negative connotation, meaning improper audacity, while in English it has a more positive meaning. In Yiddish, shlep is usually used as a transitive verb for carrying something else, while the English term, "schlep", is also used as an intransitive verb, for dragging oneself. In Yiddish, glitsh means "slip", while the English form, "glitch", means malfunction.

List of words

These English words of Yiddish origin, except as noted, are in the online editions of the Oxford English Dictionary, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, or the Merriam-Webster dictionary. The parentheses-enclosed information at the end of each word's entry starts with the original Yiddish term in Hebrew script, the Latin script transliteration, and the literal English translation. This may be followed by additional relevant languages. One or more dictionary references appear at the end.
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