What is "yenta"

"gossip, busybody," 1923, from Yente Telebende, comic strip gossip in 1920s-30s writing of Yiddish newspaper humorist B. Kovner (pen-name of Jacob Adler) in the "Jewish Daily Forward." It was a common Yiddish fem. proper name, altered from Yentl and said to be ultimately from Italian gentile "kind, gentle," earlier "noble, high-born" (see gentle).

n. 1 a woman who meddles in the business of others; a busybody; a woman gossip; a gossipmonger 2 a matchmaker; a woman who specializes in finding spouses.

1. n. (Yiddish) a vulgar shrew; a shallow coarse termagant

2. (Yiddish) a woman gossip unable to keep a secret; a woman who spreads rumors and scandal

Yenta or Yente is a Yiddish designation for a woman who is a gossip or busybody.

In the age of Yiddish theater, it started referring to a busybody or gossipmonger. The word has since become Yinglish (a Yiddish loanword in American Jewish English). In the 1920s Yenta was first popularized by the humorist Jacob Adler (not the actor Jacob P. Adler) writing under his pen name B. Kovner, in which he created the character Yenta, and featured Yenta in a Broadway play entitled Yenta Telebenta. Yenta was also his character in a 50-year writing career for The Jewish Daily Forward.

The name was used as the name of the matchmaker in the Broadway musical hit, Fiddler on the Roof. It was the name of an Israeli spy agency in the 1960s TV sitcom Get Smart, in an episode titled 'The Man from Yenta'.

The name has also been used for:

• The Linux CardBus controller, which brings together Cardbus cards with the rest of the computer.
• The name of a highly available key-value store for Perl