Putz Around

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, hello. This is Susan from Northeast Michigan.

Hi, Susan. Welcome.

Well, my son, he loves to talk on the phone, so he’ll call me on Saturdays or whenever, you know, when he’s not working. He works a lot. But, you know, he’ll say, “Hi, Mom, what are you doing?” And I’ll say, “Well, oh, I’m just putzing around.” And, you know, I’ve been saying that for years. I never thought anything of it. But about a year ago, he’s like, “Oh, Mom, don’t say that. That’s off color. That’s disgusting.” And I’m like, “What? I’m just putzing around, you know. I’m like not really doing a lot, just kind of walking around the house doing a little bit of everything.”

Well, Susan, first of all, let’s find out how old is your son?

Jason is 36 years old.

Okay, Jason is 36. And what’s his problem with putzing around?

He has indicated that the word putz means the body part.

Yes, penis.

Putz comes from a Yiddish word for penis, right? And that’s his problem with it?

Oh, yes, yes, yes.

Okay. It’s true. It’s true. It does.

Yeah. But, so he learned this somewhere in his 30s and then suddenly realized that his mother was an embarrassing creature and he could barely stand to talk to her. Is that what you’re saying?

Right. Well, it doesn’t stop him from calling me.

Oh, I see. Well, that’s good. That part is good. But, yes, that’s how he thinks of it, that puts his penis, and so then he takes it from there.

Okay. So, yeah, little etymological knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Yes, it is. And so his problem, he’s a little embarrassed because his mother’s using this language that somehow is sexualized in his mind, and that kind of seems off-limits for you, right, based on your mother-son relationship.

Yeah. He doesn’t want to hear anything like that from you.

Not from his mother, right.

Right, yeah. Right, that’s a good point. It’s an interesting dilemma.

On one hand, putz has long since left Yiddish and is now fully entrenched both as a noun and a verb in mainstream English, and most English speakers have no clue whatsoever what the origin of the word is, and that’s just fine.

Huh.

Yeah, the etymology of putz doesn’t have to really control the current modern contemporary meaning of it, right? It can still just mean goofing around or doing a little bit of this and that. Or if you call somebody a putz, it’s just going to mean they’re a fool or, you know, an idiot, right? And it doesn’t have to mean penis anymore.

On the other hand, we are in a country where there are many people who, if they don’t speak Yiddish, at least they remember many Yiddish words from their parents and grandparents. We’re probably talking more than a million people. And there’s a very high likelihood that if you tell somebody that you’re putzing around, they will know what it meant in Yiddish.

They will know. And so you put yourself in a predicament. Now, he learned this secondhand. So does it count? I don’t know.

Yeah. Well, do you remember the New York Senator Alphonse D’Amato got into all kinds of hot water because he called the Democratic challenger, Charles Schumer, a putz head? And some people took offense at that and some people didn’t. Particularly in New York, where Yiddish is a living language. And again, even if you don’t speak it, you probably know a little bit about it. Right.

I would say between you and your son, you’re perfectly fine. And, of course, on a national radio show where we can discuss these things clinically, you’re fine. But if you ever get a chance to meet a rabbi in Temple, you probably want to avoid that word.

Okay, okay. And that makes sense. I mean, you know, we both actually, and my son reads a lot, too. So I’m sure that’s how he thinks of it. So that’s good advice.

Thank you, Karen.

Thanks for calling.

Oh, thank you so much, and thanks for having me.

Our pleasure.

Thanks, Susan.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673, or send your emails to words@waywordradio.org.