Dave Wilton’s wordorigins.org notes two Yiddish words with first citations from 1937 in the Oxford English Dictionary: bupkes, meaning nothing, and zaftig, also spelled zoftig, meaning big, plump, soft, or juicy. Bupkes may originally have referred...
What pet names do you have for your loved ones? In The Joys of Yiddish, Leo Rosten shares the name his Mother used to call him — bubala, a term of endearment grandmothers might use in addressing children. We have all kinds of substitutes for the...
