More words that entered the lexicon around 1937: Yiddish “bupkes,” meaning “nothing,” and “zaftig” meaning “plump,” “soft,” or “juicy.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Even More 1937 Words”
I was telling you about Dave Wilton’s wordorigins.org site.
Yes.
He’s going through the Oxford English Dictionary looking for words that have their first citations from 1937.
Well, two of them are Yiddish words.
Bupkis, meaning nothing.
I think it means goat droppings originally.
Yes, or beans.
And zaftig, meaning big, which I guess at the time wasn’t particularly derogatory because it comes from a word meaning juicy.
Right.
But now there’s some question about whether or not it’s nice or not.
Is it euphemistic for large or is it insulting for large?
It’s just plump and luscious.
Yeah.
You know, a ripe peach.
I don’t know.
Zaftig.
It’s Z-A-F-T-I-G or Z-O-F-T-I-G, depending.
That’s cool.
Zaftig.
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