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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
schmuck
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A genius, maybe, but also a schmuck.
▪ I thought it was all a joke, you've really got to be some schmuck to fall for that one.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
schmuck

also shmuck, "contemptible person," 1892, from East Yiddish shmok, literally "penis," probably from Old Polish smok "grass snake, dragon," and likely not the same word as German Schmuck "jewelry, adornments," which is related to Low German smuck "supple, tidy, trim, elegant," and to Old Norse smjuga "slip, step through" (see smock).\n

\nIn Jewish homes, the word was "regarded as so vulgar as to be taboo" [Leo Rosten, "The Joys of Yiddish," 1968] and Lenny Bruce wrote that saying it on stage got him arrested on the West Coast "by a Yiddish undercover agent who had been placed in the club several nights running to determine if my use of Yiddish terms was a cover for profanity." Euphemized as schmoe, which was the source of Al Capp's cartoon strip creature the shmoo.\n

\n"[A]dditional associative effects from German schmuck 'jewels, decoration' cannot be excluded (cross-linguistically commonplace slang: cf. Eng. 'family jewels')" [Mark R.V. Southern, "Contagious Couplings: Transmission of Expressives in Yiddish Echo Phrases," 2005]. But the English phrase refers to the testicles and is a play on words, the "family" element being the essential ones. Words for "decoration" seem not to be among the productive sources of European "penis" slang terms.

Wiktionary
schmuck

n. 1 (context vulgar English) The penis. 2 (context pejorative English) A useless item or person. 3 (context pejorative US English) A jerk; an unpleasant or detestable person.

WordNet
schmuck

n. (Yiddish) a jerk [syn: shmuck, schmo, shmo]

Wikipedia
Schmuck (surname)

Schmuck is a surname of German origin. As a noun, it means jewelry; as an adjective, it means neat in the sense of clean, tidy, or having a simple elegance. The name is commonly seen on signs and billboards in Germany and Austria related to the merchandising of precious jewelry. The Schmuck family name has been traced to the birth of Christian von Schmuck in 1370. In 1624, an Armorial Patent, or Coat of Arms, was granted at Rattenberg by Archduke Leopold V of Austria.

There are other associated surname variations throughout Central Europe, as Hungary and Romania, including spelling variations of Szmuk in these countries.

Schmuck (pejorative)

"Schmuck", or "shmuck", in American English is a pejorative term meaning one who is stupid or foolish, or an obnoxious, contemptible or detestable person. The word came into the English language from Yiddish (שמאָק, shmok), where it has similar pejorative meanings, but where its original and literal meaning is penis.

Schmuck

Schmuck may refer to:

  • Schmuck (pejorative), a common pejorative of Yiddish origin
  • Schmuck (surname), a surname of German origin
  • Schmuck Dudley, stage name of American wrestler Jeff Roth
  • Dinner for Schmucks, a 2010 film
  • Schmuck v. United States, a criminal case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1989.

Usage examples of "schmuck".

Phil could be a schmuck upon occasion, but basically he was a good person, so I was a little taken back by his insensitivity.

And now, John Corey, a year into his second marriage, living in the apartment of his first wife, Robin, who was living with her boss, a total schmuck, making too much money defending financially successful scum.

It was hard not to laugh again, they were such colossal schmucks, but I let them put on a little face-saving sideshow, to which middle fingers were copiously added, and eventually they sulked away.

I almost laughed out loud, these guys were such schmucks, in their own dumb way as stupid as those kids I had faced down on the street so long ago.

Algol-Raphael, patriarch of the Algol clan, king schmuck of the universe, has parked himself beside a column next to the stairway.

In this one I come off looking like a schmuck, and don't we all love stories in which the invincible hero, the all-knowing savant, the omnipotent smartass is condignly flummoxed?

Get in there and compete with all the ass kissers and bottom feeders, all the no-talent schmucks that constellate around the studio execs who don’t know what they’re doing either.

Danny Getchell lurked by the Greek Theatre, backstopped by some movie camera schmuck.

It reminded her of musical chairs: as soon as the music stopped in this room, some poor schmuck would no doubt be left standing, ass exposed and ready to be kicked.

What kind of base and brainless schmucks are these people to worship somebody who, number one, never existed, and number two, if he did, looking as he does in that picture, was without a doubt The Pansy of Palestine.

Only instead of going to the corner convenience store to buy another lottery ticket, these Joe Schmucks go back to the mines and gamble in unsafe pits and die young.

Evenings went to introspection: I screened films of my old fights, Stan `The Man' Klein, feather-fisted, cannon fodder for hungry schmucks looking to pad their records.

Twenty million of these doomed schmucks, crowded into slums overflowing an island smaller than my family’s west lawn on Old Earth, all of them fighting to breathe the only breathable air on a world where the standard is to inhale and die, crowding ever closer to the center of the sixty-mile radius of survivable atmosphere which the Atmospheric Generating Station had been able to provide before it began to malfunction.

Twenty thousand surveyed worlds fit for our kind when the Hegira began, and those schmucks came here.

The hero of my story was your classic Poor Schmuck, a guy named Roger who had done jail time twice for counterfeiting money - one more bust would make him a three-time loser.