The Lexicographer's Rules

To listen to the “decorum is declining daily” crowd, you’d think propriety had disappeared from the American media landscape. But it still has a foothold yet.

Jan Freeman writes, “Even when Rosten first issued his caution, nearly 40 years ago, dreck was not truly taboo: The New York Times, which takes a tough line on vulgarity, used it as early as 1967.”

I teased a Times editor recently that they’re all prudes, prigs, and squares over there, because when I submitted my second-annual words-of-the-year list to the New York Times, a different editor declined to include crotchfruit because it was “vulgar.”

Later, I also nominated crotchfruit as the “most outrageous word of the year” in the American Dialect Society’s 16th-annual word-of-the-year vote, a category which it won. Despite the enormous press coverage of that vote, only a handful of newspapers—most notably the Atlanta Journal-Constitution—included the word in their stories. I know I’m over-conditioned to accept nearly all words no matter what their connotations or subtextual invocations, but this outcome surprised me. I would’ve thought it would’ve been in headlines.

Before I heard the yiddish, I heard the German: “da haben wir den Dreck”...could be translated “ah ha! there is the dirt”.  It was a colloguialism for the satisfaction of expressing that you just knew something was foul despite appearances and now you have put your finger on what it is thats rotten.

No, dreck is not german for “dirt” except in the sense of “night soil” but how is a highschool teacher going to handle that, in the 60’s yet?

BTW, you should have Wex’s “Born to Kvetch” on your shelf if you want a little more depth on Yiddish origins than Rosten provided. Maybe you already do?

Headlines are for fights, not for words.  Colbert is sure making a faux fight about truthiness. [even he can’t quite make headlines]

Perhaps the prissies of prose at NYT have not read Dr. Zhivago.  Pasternak described Zhivago’s alienation from his family by his passing glance at the “fruit between the legs” being how he knew his newborn was a son.

For Yiddish, I tend to consult the following:

The New Joys of Yiddish, Leo Rosten, revised by Lawrence Bush (Arrow, London, 2003)

Modern English-Yiddish Yiddish English Dictionary, Uriel Weinreich (YIVO, New York, 1968).

Harkavy’s Manual Dictionary (Hebrew Publishing Co., New York, 1894).

Anglish/Yinglish, 2e, Gene Bluestein (U. of Neb. Press, Lincoln, 1998).

Hooray for Yiddish!, Leo Rosten (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1982).

The Joys of Hebrew, Lewis Glinert (Oxford University Press, New York, 1992).

Frumspeak: The First Dictionary of Yeshivish, Chaim M. Weiser (Rowman & Littlefield, Maryland, 2004).