Yiddish Phrase on SNL
Ali Lemer
About the "Yiddish" phrase that Linda Richman (Mike Meyers) always says,
that Snoop Doggy Dog said in the promo,
"I've got shpilkes in my genektegezoint"...
"Shpilkes" is Yiddish for "pins" (as in straight pins for sewing).
"Genektegezoint" is a Yiddish-like nonsense word that has no real
meaning as far as I and my Yiddish dictionary could ascertain.
When people say "I've got shpilkes" ("Ikh hob shpilkes"), it means
they're antsy or nervous, rather like saying "I've got ants in my
pants." However, one need not actually say WHERE one has shpilkes
(i.e. in the "tukhus", for example), but can simply say "I've got
shpilkes"; the rest is understood idiomatically.
A lot of what Mike Meyers actually says is nonsense Yiddish sprinkled
with actual Yiddish words. For example, his famous "verklemt" is not
a real Yiddish word that I could find. The closest thing, both
spelling- and meaning-wise, was "vaklen zikh", which means "to shake"
or "to wobble" (the "vaklen" is the verb and the "zikh" means "self",
making it reflexive).
-- Ali.
--
-- "So why keep hanging on ------------ Ali Lemer -----------------------------
-- To ropes that just aren't there? --- pho...@ctr.columbia.edu --------------
-- Now I'm at the end of mine, ------------------------------------------------
-- Holding onto air." -- S.W. ------ BNL, M.A.Y., TMBG, MST3k and S.W. rock! --
Allison Goldberg
speak more than a few words of yiddish, faklempt (or vaklempt) is one
of them.... it *is* a real Yiddish word (my grandmother and mother
used to use it when they spoke) ... it means all choked up.
Allison Goldberg
Duke Law '94
GO DEVILS!!
