What drink-type's name means "a
spray" in Yiddish?
Etymology, Etymology, and more Etymology
as well as grammar, usage, euphemism, slang, jargon, semantics (meaning), linguistics, neologism, idiom, word origin, syntax, dialect, lexicon (vocabulary), diction, pidgin, synonym, antonym, homonym, cant, argot, lingo, and redundancy.
The critically-acclaimed board game
MooT
consists of tough questions about the nuances of the English language.
Answer:
the spritzer
The word spritzer derives from the German/Yiddish
spritz, spray. It denotes a drink composed of
wine and soda water.
Please note that these are draft questions for the board game MooT.
If you spot an error or disagree with anything I've said here,
please let me know and I'll fix it.
(the Mootguy)
Feedback
It's a hard
question, is an English word Yiddish or German? Yiddish is essentially a group
of German dialects, with some distinctive vocabulary. If one knows that a word
entered English directly from general German with no Yiddish intermediary, then
it is clearly German.
And if it is a word that is common
in Yiddish but not German (or wasn't common in German when it came into
English), then it is Yiddish. But if it is a word shared by Yiddish and German,
and the word is known to have come into English via people who spoke Yiddish,
is it then a Yiddish or German word?
In a sense, Yiddish
and modern German are dialects of a more recent Germanic language, and English
(while being so different as to be called another language) is also of the
Germanic family. Who owns a word that is shared by all three?
x-Steve White
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Steve: Don't worry, buddy! Vocabulary isn't like land:
English-, German-, and Yiddish-speakers can all rightfully claim ownership of
"spritzer" without coming to blows.
x-jacko@lycos.com
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I always thought it was German. We use this exact same word in the
former Yugoslavia--I'm from bosnia. Quite a few german loanwords there, but no
yiddish ones as far as I know. O wait, maybe it came into American English via
immigrant Yiddish speakers, but into the Balkans via German speakers.
x-subatomiczoo@gmail.com
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Isn't it actually derived from
German?
Yes, it is. I was
wrong. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word derives from
German.
x-alejandro.rodriguez.1975@gmail.com
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