schnook

   An American Yiddish term for a meek and ineffectual person, a patsy. In John Updike’s Rabbit is Rich a father calls his adult son ‘you poor little shnook’, though the family is certainly not Yiddishspeaking.

   ‘Schnooky boy’ is used in a friendly way in The Limits of Love, by Frederic Raphael, though there is an edge to it. A man who refuses to acknowledge his own Jewishness says: ‘It’s a perfectly plausible line to say that one intends to integrate oneself with the country one lives in. Other so called racial groups have done it, I don’t see why we shouldn’t.’ The reply to this, spoken by another Jewish man, is: The German Jews did it, schnooky boy, and look what happened to them.’