Ellington

It’s a congenial conversation with your new best friends.

We’ve all done it, and will no doubt do it again. I’m talking about schmoozing, of course. I must thank Hayley Tamm for inspiring yet another word.

To schmooze (or schmoose or shmooze) is to “gossip, [or] engage in a long and intimate conversation,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, or to “converse casually, especially in order to gain an advantage or make a social connection,” as defined by the American Heritage Dictionary. One might schmooze with a famous professor, or a drummer from a band or a famous professor who plays in a band. The possibilities for schmoozing are socially endless.

This slang word comes to us from the Yiddish shmuesn, meaning to “talk” or “converse,” from the Hebrew shĕmūah, meaning “rumor.” Yiddish is the traditional language of the Ashkenazic Jews of Central and Eastern Europe.

The Ashkenazim lived primarily in the western Rhineland region of Germany, as reflected in the origin of Yiddish, the Anglicized form of jüdisch, or “Jewish,” from jüdisch deutsch, or “Jewish-German,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Yiddish words and expressions that pepper popular English include kvetch (to complain or whine), mensch (a man or woman of integrity, or an all-round good person), nosh (to nibble, or a small bite to eat), schlep (to muddle through without enthusiasm, or drag or carry something that’s not that important) and, my favorite, oy vey (an exclamation expressing dismay).

Where were we? Oh yes, schlepping through schmooze like a literary mensch who’d rather be noshing.

So, schmooze first popped up in written English — and thus onto the OED’s etymological radar screen — as a verb in about 1897 in a Nov. 14 New York Times Magazine article, with the line, “he loves dearly to stop and chat (Schmoos, he calls it).”

A slightly later example from the Feb. 4, 1939 issue of the New Yorker includes this interesting note, “schmoozing in the garment district is more than just a lot of idle chatter. Schmoozing is a careful tradition, dear to the hearts of everyone in New York’s most thickly populated business section ... Everybody in the district eats fast, the better and more to schmooze.”

As a noun, schmooze was first noted in that same year, but a fine example comes to us from slightly later, as found in Billie Holiday’s autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, with the line, “[Lena Horne] insisted on taking me out with her and bought me lunch, and we had a wonderful schmooze about the old days in Hollywood.” Holiday (1915-1959), as some of you may know, was one of the greatest American jazz singers to grace our airwaves.

So the next time you’re out schmoosing with your fellow schmoozers, remember that you’re living out a bit of Yiddish-American slang. Please feel free to send me your word ideas and until next time, cheerio!

Reach columnist Will Mari at features@dailyuw.com.