Farblonjet

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you? This is Elliot. I live in Cape Cod.

Hi, Elliot. Welcome to the show.

Nice. What’s going on?

I grew up in, actually, Miami Beach, of all places. We moved out of New York, down south, and I lived in Georgia, and then we moved to Miami Beach.

And I heard a word as I was a young child, and I heard it again in New York. I have not used it, or I use it a couple of times. People don’t really know what I was talking about.

The word was flubblungent, and I know it’s German, yet it’s Hebrew. And that’s a strange combination, but it’s a word that I’ve only heard used maybe two times in New York.

Can you say that again?

It’s called flubblungent.

And how would you use it in a sentence?

I mean, someone has to be acting flubblungent in a way, or it’s their end result if they got confused or something. You know, they’re forblundent.

You are forblundent. You don’t make, you know, it’s not like something you cook, you know. Generally speaking, it’s described as a word that means to be lost or astray or befuddled.

Right. Confused, something like that.

And it has a lot of different spellings.

That I knew, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, like F-A-R-B-L-O-N-J-E-T, forblundent.

Right. Farblunget, F-A-R-B-L-U-N-G-E-T. And we think that it may go back to Polish, a Polish term that means to go astray.

But you’re right that it’s Yiddish. What’s interesting to me about this is that if you look this word up in some of the standard Yiddish or Jewish language books, a lot of them written in the 80s or earlier will say, oh, this is a common word that you’ll hear every day.

And the thing is, you don’t really hear it anymore. It’s not common at all, not like it was.

No, it’s an unusual word. You know when words sound like what they are, the meaning is what they sound like?

Right, right. It’s been adopted kind of self-consciously by a lot of comics because it’s such a funny-sounding word to describe something that’s messed up.

Well, it’s more tragic to these people who get lost, I think. I mean, they’re really messed up. They’re not only lost, but they’re lost in life. They’re lost in life.

Thank you for sharing your story with us, Elliot. We really appreciate it.

Well, it was funny. Thanks very much. Take care now.

Thanks. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

The Yiddishisms of everything that I’ve seen show that they’re kind of fading in the American English language. It’s kind of the death knell has not been rung yet, but Yiddish itself is reducing in size, fewer speakers, and its influence on English has long since waned.

Yeah, unfortunately. But he made a good point that in Yiddish, it’s a more, what am I trying to say? It’s not such a comical word.

Right, yeah. It’s a serious word. Yeah, it’s somebody who’s lost their way in life or lost sight of the big things that are important.

Right.

877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.