schmuck

   Regarded as a taboo word in polite Jewish society. It derives from German Schmuck, ‘ornament, jewellery’ or schmuck, ‘neat, smart’ but in slang refers specifically to the penis or, vocatively, to a person for whom one feels contempt, a jerk, dope, boob, etc. It has the euphemistic form ‘shmo’.

   In Portnoy’s Complaint, by Philip Roth, one Jewish boy says to another: ‘Schmuck, what’d you go home for?’ Oliver’s Story, by Erich Segal, has an American woman saying to her lover: ‘You big romantic schmuck.’ She also says: ‘Schmuck, I am in a meeting.’ There is no mention of this speaker being Jewish. Mordecai Richler, in St Urbain’s Horseman, prefers the spelling ‘shmock’ for this vocative.