Verbs

TAKE ANY everyday English verb. The word "buy " for example. In English, you buy something, you buy something. But in Yiddish the word is charged with dramatic implications. You didn't just buy something. You spent your last dollar that your child, the college freshman, should have the deluxe dormitory accommodation. Or consider the simple act of walking. "Do you walk to the shopping center?" someone asks. "I walk, " you answer. With my sciatica, corns, varicose veins, five blocks I walk up and back every day, my husband wouldn't buy a second car. In Yiddish you can bend over to tie your shoelace, and when you straighten up, you are a martyr!

shlep (shlep) To drag. Not merely to move an object, but to accept a greater burden than any person should be expected to. One who SHLEPS, whether it is his whole family on a cross-country car trip, or the laundry up from the basement, is a martyr in the truest sense.

kvetch (kvech*) To complain. To gripe with noxious persistence. KVETCHING Is the right of every woman, no matter how well off she is, to let other women know that life isn't too easy for her.

nudge (nooj) To bother. To make a nuisance of yourself. Your husband is enjoying himself with a good book. You NUDGE him about vacation plans for 2012, he shouldn't be too content.

plotz (plots) To explode. To fall apart as with laughter or overeating. At your mother's dinner you have two choices: to eat like a normal human being and disgrace her, or to eat as she tells you and PLOTZ.

pager (pay gur) To die a martyred death. The weather is so hot you could PAGER. Or the weather is so cold you could PAGER. Or your son in medical school drops out and enlists for six years in the merchant marine. YOU PAGER.

tseshmetter (tseh shmeh ter) To smash into pieces. To clobber. "What happened to the Mets today?" "They were TSESHMETTERED!"

zager (zay gur) To connive. To play the angles. The guy in the next office who started the same day you did gets three weeks' vacation. You only get one. Let's face it, he knows how to ZAGER.

shpritz (shprits) To spray. Just a nice little word to describe when you're talking to someone named Schuster or Schlesinschloss, and you make wet on him.