Shmendrik (Yiddish: שמענדריק), also rendered as schmendrick or shmendrick is a Yiddish word meaning a stupid person or a little hapless jerk ("a pathetic sad sack"). Its origin is the name of a clueless mama's boy played by Sigmund Mogulesko in an 1877 comedy Shmendrik, oder di komishe Chaseneh (Schmendrik or The Comical Wedding) by Abraham Goldfaden. The play was inspired by a sketch presented by Mogulesco at an audition before Goldfaden. Since then the word was often used as a name in the works of Jewish humour.
Regarding the perception of the word, The Joys of Yiddish lexicon stresses the meagerness of shmendrick compared to other Jewish schm-words for luckless persons: "A shmendrik is a small, short, weak, thin, a young nebekh". This is directly opposite to mentsh (more commonly spelled as "mensch") which, in short, means a "real" man of upstanding character and a person to emulate.
Notable usages
- Shmendrik, oder di komishe Chaseneh, original usage
- Shmendrick is a "wise Man of Chelm" in the 1999 Canadian animated comedy Village of Idiots
- Schmendrick the Magician, wizard from the fantasy novel The Last Unicorn, which was made into an animated film and had a sequel Two Hearts. The author, Peter S. Beagle, describes the choice of the name as borrowed from the Yiddish term, which he describes as "somebody out of his depth, the boy sent to do a man's job, someone who has expanded to the limits of his incapacity".
- Shosshi Schmendrik is a socially awkward, shy carpenter in the 1899 play Children of the Ghetto
See also
References
- Etiquette for Schmucks, Schlemiels, Schlimazels and Schmendriks, Forward, May 12, 2010
- shmendrik, Jewish English Lexicon
- schmendrick, Oxford English Dictionary
- The Joys of Yiddish: p. 353
- Michael Wex, How to Be a Mentsh (And Not a Shmuck), 2009
- Beagle, Peter S. (2007). The Last Unicorn. Deluxe Edition. New York: Roc Books. ISBN 978-0-7607-8374-0