You schlub!
Mitä sitä tekisikään ilman A Word A Day -sähköpostilistaa. Tämän päivän anti alla.
Sometimes I wonder how I have been able to live without A Word A Day emails.
Today's gem:
This week's theme: words from Yiddish.
schlub (shlub) noun, also spelled as zhlub or zhlob
A clumsy oaf.
[From Yiddish, from Polish zhlob (blockhead, trough, manger).]
Comments - Kommentit
Mitä mä tekisin ilman tätä blogia? Mulle tuo oaf:kin oli uusi tuttavuus...! :-)
Posted by: Timo | July 20, 2006 09:11 PM
Mainio sahkopostilista! Ja sattui tuo paivan sanakin oikein hyvin kohdalleen...
Terveisia Dallasista!
Posted by: Anna | July 21, 2006 03:05 PM
Kiitos motivoinnista, Timo - kun on tullut oltua vähän laiskana näissä bloggausasioissa.
Hei Anna - blogisi on uusi tuttavuus!
Posted by: Anni | July 21, 2006 05:55 PM
Yiddish seems to be such an expressive (not to mention onomatopoeic) language. Schlep, schlub...
Posted by: Angharad | July 22, 2006 06:58 PM
I did not know you speak Yiddish, Angharad - should not have come as a surprise I suppose. What about some Finnish for a change? Onomatopoeic (or onomatopoetic) in Finnish = onomatopoeettinen.
Posted by: Anni | July 23, 2006 11:59 AM
Don't be mean, Anni. Of course I don't speak Yiddish - nor are any of my friends fluent. But one or two of them seem to have picked up a variety of wonderful phrases from their grandparents and they always seem terribly fitted to their purpose! Or perhaps I just like the "schl" sound...
Posted by: Angharad | July 23, 2006 10:06 PM
Sorry Angharad, I should have added a huge smiley but since I can't force myself to use those, I realise I sounded a bit sour! I like the schl sound, too, but I have never known anyone who actually speaks Yiddish.
Aren't there some fantastic letter combinations in Welsh, too?
Posted by: Anni | July 24, 2006 10:58 AM
Aha! I like the party-hat version *:0) (except that the asterix pompom is crooked and the hat itself is missing here since it's a pointy bracket thing)
Welsh is good for nifty sounds. Here's the first line of a book I was given recently about Fflos the sheep-dog:
Ci defaid oedd Fflos o ran ei thras, ond roedd hi'n byw yn y dref.
And if it wasn't for all the pictures I really wouldn't have the faintest idea what was going on.
Was it Navajo that the Americans used as a code in WWII because all the consonant clusters made it unbreakable using conventional cryptographic technology?
Posted by: Angharad | July 24, 2006 08:33 PM
Sorry about the pointy bracket thing, Angharad.
Yes, I must admit I have no idea what Fflos the sheep dog is doing in your example.
I doubt there would have been lots of Navajo speaking interpreters on the European continent during the WWII, so it would have been quite a handy language to use for that reason, too.
Posted by: Anni | July 31, 2006 01:54 PM