question of the weekend: What does the word ‘schmuck’ mean to you?

I always thought it was something close to dummy, moron. I never got the aggressive, "jerk" connotation, maybe because it's kind of a funny-sounding word.

Might be the cleverest part fo the movie: People thinks it means "Dinner for Losers", referring go the guests, when it really means "Dinner for Dicks" referring to the hosts.

Given how bad the movie apparently is, that's likely not intentional.

Specifically, my understanding of "schmuck" was always someone who didn't know that they were being played or was unaware the joke was on them. Which, as far as I can tell -- I skipped the press screening because Twitter exploded in a wave of negative vibes from L.A. critic-folk, as well as a friend who compared it to Christmas With the Kranks, my least-favorite in-theater viewing experience ever -- fits the characters at the dinner pretty well.

I knew what 'schmuck' means, but never thought it could translate to 'Dinner with Dicks' - wow, that really changes the whole meaning of the movie, doesn't it?

I find it interesting how most everyone apart from MaryAnn is raving about this movie. Mostly men. Again, fascinating.

I've known that "schmuck" meant "prick" since I was in my teens; not because my parents spoke Yiddish (though they did), but because I read part of Leo Rosten's _The Joys of Yiddish_.

Yiddish isn't a language for Talmudic scholars, by the way; it was the common language of Jews in Eastern Europe for hundreds of years. I learned Hebrew in school, but not Yiddish, so my parents used it to discuss things they didn't want me to hear, including dirty jokes. :)

@I_Sell_Books:

I think you are imagining things. I have heard almost nothing but flat-out, hateful pans. From everybody.

Schmuck is no putz.

To me it always meant "idiot," or someone being played for a fool but entirely oblivious to that fact.

gah! no! a schmuck is definitely more like a jerk ... someone who is oblivious to the feelings and effects on others! so, dinner with pricks would apply to the guys giving the dinner, not the hapless guests... they're schlmeels or schmoes or some other pathetic soul.

I always thought it to mean jerk, sucker,immoral creep.
I'm more fascinated with the word "schtupt (heard it
first in the movies)." It sounds more "Onomatopoeia-ish."

@ Tyler Foster:

It's that damned ad Hulu keeps showing with the 'rave' reviews. I seem to recall Big Names attached to the large font quotes (like what's-his-face from Rolling Stone). Of course, the tv is some distance away from me... ;)

Sucker, loser, pushover, moron, dupe...

Basically an oblivious fool, emphasis on the oblivious part. I've never heard it used with asshole type connotations, let alone anything more off-colour. But then I get the impression that few Yiddish words get absorbed into English with their original meaning intact.

Schmuck = dick = jerk = tool. That's my initial reaction.

The French title that "Dinner for Schmucks" is based on was "Le dîner de cons", so the translation makes sense to me.

If you need a clue, look it up: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/con#French

I would have taken schmuck to mean 'dupe' or 'sucker', which would elegantly translate into Dutch as 'slemiel' (same as bronxbee's shlemeel above): Yiddish translated into Yiddish!
(In Dutch subtitles for movies about moviemaking, American 'dailies' are commonly translated as British 'rushes', the latter being the current phrase in the Dutch film industry.)

Not american - thought it meant idiot

I think most gentiles on this side of the Pond are vaguely aware that it's of Yiddish origin, but are ignorant of its actual meaning. We tend to think of it as a slightly old-fashioned American term for 'dope' or 'loser', usually employed by bad-tempered bosses in '70s cop shows. Extra points if they're chomping a cigar. :-)

Sometimes the ruder meaning of a term can get lost over time. For example, the term "berk" is usually used here as a very mild curse, the sort of thing that can be used on TV before the watershed or even in kids' shows. Few people are aware that it's a shortened version of "Berkshire Hunt", which is rhyming slang for something a good deal more profane.

I'm an Israeli with Anglo parents, so I'm not sure if I count, but I've always seen schmuck as a tongue-in-cheek put-down, a little like "twit". A kind of cheerful abuse. I've never heard it used as a serious insult. It does mean penis, but then so do about half of the words in Yiddish, so I don't think there's reason to get particularly excited. The sense would not really be translated into "dinner with penises". Your friends are splitting hairs.

The Israeli use (pronounced "shmock") is a little more aggressive, for whatever reason, and is closer in meaning to "arsehole". I don't think it'd be translated literally, but not because they have problems with swearing. I at least think there have been a few movies coming out with swear words in their titles recently. On the other hand, they don't seem to put much thought into the translation, so possibly they will translate it literally.

The Talmudic guys spoke Aramaic, by the way. Those books belong to the days before Jews had a sense of humour, so Yiddish wouldn't have served them very well, even if it had existed.

I have a Jewish mother of Eastern European extraction, whose parents spoke fluent Yiddish, so I knew what schmuck meant (all the Yiddish that's come down to my generation, though, is 'oy gevalt' and 'tuchus', pretty much). Most people in the UK would just think it meant a kind of sad and pathetic loser, I think.

To me in the UK, it would mostly signify "this person is trying to sound Jewish and/or New York/Hollywood American" rather than having any meaning of its own.

Canadian goy, here. My understanding of the word came from my favourite movie rant ever, that of Terri Garr's character in Tootsie when she discovers part of Dustin Hoffman's duplicity (but only the part that directly affects her). From her heartfelt and furious "Smuck!", I gathered the word meant a person (most probably a guy) who is an unfeeling, clumsy and cruel dickhead. I didn't feel I had to look it up.

gah! no! a schmuck is definitely more like a jerk ... someone who is oblivious to the feelings and effects on others! so, dinner with pricks would apply to the guys giving the dinner, not the hapless guests... they're schlmeels or schmoes or some other pathetic soul.

That may have been what it meant originally but it seems obvious by the way it often used in shows like, say, Buffy to describe someone who would ordinarily be described as a fool or an idiot that its meaning has shifted a bit. (Then again, since its most obvious use on Buffy occurs toward the end of Joss Whedon's "Lessons" episode, in which an evil entity uses the word to describe a reformed character who is trying to give up his evil ways, it might be argued that that particular usage says more about Whedon's grasp of Yiddish culture than anything else.)

Then again, English is full of words that have shifted meaning over the years--"gay," of course, being the most obvious example. So why shouldn't Yiddish words shift meaning as well?

And I highly doubt that most American movie-goers who are not familiar with the foreign language in question think too deeply about the literal meaning of words like schweinhund or pendejo--except when they write on forums like this one...