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A kvetch. If you need a word for something/someone annoying, unreasonable, unpleasant, lazy, cantankerous or absurd, Yiddish is here for you.
by telebell 4y ago
A kvetch. If you need a word for something/someone annoying, unreasonable, unpleasant, lazy, cantankerous or absurd, Yiddish is here for you.
- lloydatkinson 4y agoTIL Yiddish has a word that accurately describes a majority of HN users
- hprotagonist 4y agoI'm also fond of "[obdurate|inveterate] pedant"
- katspaugh 4y agoIn German, "Quatsch" means nonsense.
- FlyingSnake 4y agoI thought of the same word, Quatsch. The Yiddish word probably shares the same roots.
- captainmuon 4y agoI always thought it is related to "quetschen" (squeezing). A kvetsh is somebody who is being squeezed and winces or squeaks (and incidentally, to squeak=quietschen).
- katspaugh 4y agoOh, you’re absolutely right. Oxford dictionary says: > 1960s: from Yiddish kvetsh (noun), kvetshn (verb), from Middle High German quetschen, literally ‘crush’.
- schwartzworld 4y agoI always learned kvetch to mean a complainer (or the act of complaining itself). I don't think this carries with it the implication that the person is unpleasant, much less lazy or absurd.
- dspillett 4y agoYiddish has some of the best words for describing people and their mannerisms, some of which have been fully adopted by English, like klutz and (a little less common) chutzpah.