Barney from Carmel, Indiana, says his family always used the term schniddles to refer to teeny bits of detritus left on the table after snipping paper snowflakes. It’s most likely a variant of schnibbles, a far more common term for “scraps,” or “small pieces,” which is heard in parts of the United States that were settled largely by German immigrants. The term comes from German Schnippel, meaning “scraps.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Schnibbles, Schnippel, Schniddles”
Hello, welcome to A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Barney. I’m calling from Carmel, Indiana.
Hi, Barney. Welcome to the show.
Thank you.
Around the holidays, when we are cutting Christmas snowflakes out of paper, as lots of kids do at this time of year in school projects and otherwise, when you’re folding them all up and cutting all those little squares and circles out of them, and then we would make a big mess on the floor, and my mom would ask us to clean it up, and she called all that detritus on the floor, clean up all the schnittles. And I never really knew what that word meant. And we’ve all said it.
She also referred to schnittles as when you tear notebook paper out of a spiral bound notebook and all those little pieces of paper that snowflakes fall on the ground. We always called those schnittles. I sort of had forgotten the word and it kind of popped back into my head again. And I happened to be listening to your show when the word popped back. And I thought it was an excuse to call.
Great.
Is she of German extraction by any chance?
She is. It’s from my mom’s side of the family. The family, I believe, hails mostly from Luxembourg or has descent in Luxembourg, but it’s between Germany and France.
Are you originally from Carmel or from somewhere else, maybe closer to Chicago or even Wisconsin?
I was born in Chicago, grew up in the suburbs of Chicago.
I ask because I can hear it in your vowels.
Yes. I am a Chicago boy.
Chris, paying attention to your vowels.
It has nothing to do with schnittles. It’s just your vowels.
Yeah, it sounds like schnittles is a variant of a more common term for those little bitty scraps, which is schnibel. And it comes from the German word schnipple, which means simply a scrap, S-C-H-N-I-P-P-E-L in the German. And S-C-H-N-I-B-B-L-E in English, although there are lots of different variants of this, schnipfel and schnivel and schnufel and snibble and snibblen. It all has to do with those little things that result from a lot of snipping.
So it could be paper, it could be cloth, it could be pieces of plant matter, just any bunch of small anything, right?
Yeah, yeah, little scraps after sewing.
Yeah, sometimes people refer to diced meat as schnibbles, and you can hear the German in there, schnibble.
That’s fascinating. I always assumed it had something to do with German, but I never really looked it up, and it was something my mom said her aunt used to always say to her, and so it just sort of passed down. And I hadn’t really said it much until more recently, again, making some with my own kids, I suppose, and sort of forgot the word.
That’s how it goes.
Yeah, so you use a T sound in there, huh? Schnittel?
If you asked me to spell it, I’d probably say spell it with a D.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, sometimes maybe it’s pronounced more with a T, the way my mom says it, schnittles.
Yeah, or schniddles.
Yeah.
Yeah, but I’m really glad to have a word for this because you just made me realize, Barney, that I never had a word for those little scraps. And schnittles works perfectly.
Well, when we were very resourceful as children, we would pick up all the schnittles and then we would save them and pretend they were snowflakes and throw them in the air, which just meant cleaning them all up again.
Sounds like childhood for sure.
Sounds like the olden days, Barney.
Hey, thanks so much for calling.
Thanks, Barney. Take care.
Thank you. I love your show.
Thanks, Barney.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
I have used “schnibbles” to refer to a few bites of my food leftover fed to my dogs, to replace “table scraps”. No idea where it came from, I came here to look it up and see if it was a real word. If I ask my dogs “oh boy would you like a schnibble?” they know that means a yummy bite of people food, lol.