What is a sheeny?
Bob Hemler
Twice in the past week I heard the word "sheeny" (sp?).
I couldn't find the word in my dictionary. The first person
using it was calling himself a sheeny because of his great
skill at bartering and deal-making. (You can get 15,000 fish
hooks from him if you have something good to trade.) The
second reference was on Minnesota Public Radio in a story
about anti-Semitism in Minneapolis. "Sheeny" was used as an
insulting name for a Jewish person. If you know more about
this word, I'd love to hear it. Thanks.
Bob Hemler
Roger Lustig
> Twice in the past week I heard the word "sheeny" (sp?).
That's the usual spelling.
> I couldn't find the word in my dictionary. The first person
> using it was calling himself a sheeny because of his great
> skill at bartering and deal-making. (You can get 15,000 fish
> hooks from him if you have something good to trade.) The
Well, unless he's Jewish and being ironic, he's being a jerk. It's
an offensive term, equating
(in his case) Jewishness and its supposed negative attributes with
innate business acumen (hooked nose to smell money with and all that).
> second reference was on Minnesota Public Radio in a story
> about anti-Semitism in Minneapolis. "Sheeny" was used as an
> insulting name for a Jewish person. If you know more about
> this word, I'd love to hear it. Thanks.
Sounds like the same thing both times. It may come from the Yiddish
expression "A shayner Yid" (with 'Yid' pronounced to rhyme with 'feed');
this is a compliment one Jew would pay another, meaning, "a good/nice/
beautiful Jew." However, the abstraction of "sheeny" from that has
always been used as an insult of the same type as "kike," "mocky,"
"yid" (rhymes with kid), etc.
Roger (a shayner Yid, or so they tell me...)
>
> Bob Hemler
Alex Lange
:
: Twice in the past week I heard the word "sheeny" (sp?).
: I couldn't find the word in my dictionary. The first person
: using it was calling himself a sheeny because of his great
: skill at bartering and deal-making. (You can get 15,000 fish
: hooks from him if you have something good to trade.) The
: second reference was on Minnesota Public Radio in a story
: about anti-Semitism in Minneapolis. "Sheeny" was used as an
: insulting name for a Jewish person.
From _Dictionary of American Slang_, Wentworth and Flexner, 1975:
sheeny sheenie [derog.] n. 1. A Jew. Always derog.,
implying one who can't be trusted or one who invariably
puts his own interests first. Since before 1885; most
common c 1910--c 1925. Probably from German "schin" =
"a petty thief, cheat, miser". 2. A tailor. c 1910;
because Jews were traditionally tailors. adj. Jewish.
1922: "Yuh Sheeny bum, yuh!" O'Neill, _Hairy Ape, 7.
I doubt that the first person you mention would use this
word to describe himself if he knew how offensive it is.
Alex Lange
tha...@desire.wright.edu
Not to get us too much off the a.u.e. subject, but...
RL> (Sheeny) may come from the Yiddish
> expression "A shayner Yid" (with 'Yid' pronounced to rhyme with 'feed');
> this is a compliment one Jew would pay another, meaning, "a good/nice/
> beautiful Jew."
Is this term equivalent in essence to "A shania maidl"?
(deep apologies for misspellings) This was a play a few years ago.
>However, the abstraction of "sheeny" from that has
> always been used as an insult of the same type as "kike," "mocky,"
> "yid" (rhymes with kid), etc.
"Mocky"? Somehow I feel better that I don't know that one.
> Roger (a shayner Yid, or so they tell me...)
Roger! Shameless self-promotion during the Holy Days!
(A good new year anyway for you, Roger!)
-----ted hayes
Roger Lustig
>RL> (Sheeny) may come from the Yiddish
>> expression "A shayner Yid" (with 'Yid' pronounced to rhyme with 'feed');
>> this is a compliment one Jew would pay another, meaning, "a good/nice/
>> beautiful Jew."
[Note: someone posted an alternate hypothesis here; something to do
with a word for a thief...]
>Is this term equivalent in essence to "A shania maidl"?
>(deep apologies for misspellings) This was a play a few years ago.
Sure. The German word "schoen" is the same thing.
>> Roger (a shayner Yid, or so they tell me...)
>Roger! Shameless self-promotion during the Holy Days!
>(A good new year anyway for you, Roger!)
Shanah tovah to you, too...
Roger
>-----ted hayes
Bayla Singer
L'Shana tovah, y'all.
--bayla
arthur....@gmail.com
Peter Percival
> Back in the day sheeny was used for junkman ragman with the horse and wagon back in the thirties and forties.
>
Athel Cornish-Bowden
it certainly meant Jew. Dorothy L. Sayers seemed to think that only
Jews were circumcised.
--
athel
Ross
> Back in the day sheeny was used for junkman ragman with the horse and wagon back in the thirties and forties.
Jewish occupation. [Chapman, Dict. Am. Slang]
Ross
From the citations, it doesn't appear to have been current since about
the 1920s; but these things have a long life in memory.
Peter T. Daniels
> On Monday, July 30, 2018 at 5:54:30 PM UTC+12, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> > On 2018-07-29 20:28:33 +0000, Peter Percival said:
> > > arthur....@gmail.com wrote:
> > >> Back in the day sheeny was used for junkman ragman with the horse and
> > >> wagon back in the thirties and forties.
> > > A Jew, says Partridge, always opprobrious.
> > The only time I remember meeting the word was in Whose Body, and there
> > it certainly meant Jew. Dorothy L. Sayers seemed to think that only
> > Jews were circumcised.
>
> From the citations, it doesn't appear to have been current since about
> the 1920s; but these things have a long life in memory.
Was the assumption about "only Jews" not legitimate for its time and for
many others?
It was certainly a major plot point in one of the sequences in Michener's
*The Source* and in Burgess's *Earthly Powers* (or else one of Wouk's two
WWII novels -- those are just about the only Holocaust fictions I've read).
Peter Percival
> On Monday, July 30, 2018 at 5:53:51 AM UTC-4, Ross wrote:
>> On Monday, July 30, 2018 at 5:54:30 PM UTC+12, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>>> On 2018-07-29 20:28:33 +0000, Peter Percival said:
>>>> arthur....@gmail.com wrote:
>
>>>>> Back in the day sheeny was used for junkman ragman with the horse and
>>>>> wagon back in the thirties and forties.
>>>> A Jew, says Partridge, always opprobrious.
>>> The only time I remember meeting the word was in Whose Body, and there
>>> it certainly meant Jew. Dorothy L. Sayers seemed to think that only
>>> Jews were circumcised.
>>
>> I've never heard it used, only cited in lists of offensive words etc.
>> From the citations, it doesn't appear to have been current since about
>> the 1920s; but these things have a long life in memory.
>
> And that's when Sayers was writing.
>
> Was the assumption about "only Jews" not legitimate for its time
Jerry Friedman
sites. The "Aryans" revive any bit of anti-Semitism they can find.
--
Jerry Friedman
Peter T. Daniels
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Monday, July 30, 2018 at 5:53:51 AM UTC-4, Ross wrote:
> >> On Monday, July 30, 2018 at 5:54:30 PM UTC+12, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> >>> On 2018-07-29 20:28:33 +0000, Peter Percival said:
> >>>> arthur....@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>>> Back in the day sheeny was used for junkman ragman with the horse and
> >>>>> wagon back in the thirties and forties.
> >>>> A Jew, says Partridge, always opprobrious.
> >>> The only time I remember meeting the word was in Whose Body, and there
> >>> it certainly meant Jew. Dorothy L. Sayers seemed to think that only
> >>> Jews were circumcised.
> >> I've never heard it used, only cited in lists of offensive words etc.
> >> From the citations, it doesn't appear to have been current since about
> >> the 1920s; but these things have a long life in memory.
> > And that's when Sayers was writing.
> > Was the assumption about "only Jews" not legitimate for its time
>
> No.
> > and for
> > many others?
> >
> > It was certainly a major plot point in one of the sequences in Michener's
> > *The Source* and in Burgess's *Earthly Powers* (or else one of Wouk's two
> > WWII novels -- those are just about the only Holocaust fictions I've read).
men to strip so they could be examined would not be aware that even in
the 1920s/30s most American males were circumcised at birth.
Athel Cornish-Bowden
which someone had difficulty satisfying the police that he wasn't
Jewish when they made exactly that assumption.
--
athel
Peter Percival
Peter Percival
Peter Percival
> On Monday, July 30, 2018 at 9:38:10 AM UTC-4, Peter Percival wrote:
>> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>> On Monday, July 30, 2018 at 5:53:51 AM UTC-4, Ross wrote:
>>>> On Monday, July 30, 2018 at 5:54:30 PM UTC+12, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>>>>> On 2018-07-29 20:28:33 +0000, Peter Percival said:
>>>>>> arthur....@gmail.com wrote:
>
>>>>>>> Back in the day sheeny was used for junkman ragman with the horse and
>>>>>>> wagon back in the thirties and forties.
>>>>>> A Jew, says Partridge, always opprobrious.
>>>>> The only time I remember meeting the word was in Whose Body, and there
>>>>> it certainly meant Jew. Dorothy L. Sayers seemed to think that only
>>>>> Jews were circumcised.
>>>> I've never heard it used, only cited in lists of offensive words etc.
>>>> From the citations, it doesn't appear to have been current since about
>>>> the 1920s; but these things have a long life in memory.
>>> And that's when Sayers was writing.
>>> Was the assumption about "only Jews" not legitimate for its time
>>
>> No.
>
> And you know that how?
>
Kerr-Mudd,John
<peterxp...@hotmail.com> wrote:
[]
> Oh sorry again. I should have replied to Peter T. Daniels.
>
--
Bah, and indeed, Humbug.
Peter T. Daniels
thing, and the question remains:
How do you know that?
[I believe you sometimes come here asking for help with English, giving
the impression that you are Chinese, and in China? or is that someone
else with a similar name?]