When a team or player is on the schneid, it means they’re in a performance or scoring slump. But if they get off the schneid, it means they’re winning or playing their best again. It’s a clipped form of Schneider, from the earlier off the Schneider or on the Schneider, which have been used in card games like rummy long before they were used in sports. The term entered English from German card games such as Schafkopf, or in English, sheepshead, where to schneider an opponent was to keep them from scoring any points. In modern German, aus dem Schneider sein means “out of the woods” or “off the hook,” a term also used in the card game skat for getting ahead on points. In German tradition, a tailor, or Schneider, was often portrayed as weak and poor. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Why Do We Say “On the Schneid” for a Scoring Slump?”
Hello.
You have A Way with Words.
Hi.
This is Ben Fridell.
I’m calling from Oniata, New York.
Hi, Ben.
Welcome to the program.
What can we do for you?
Well, I’ve been a sports fan all my life, and I grew up outside of Boston rooting for the local teams there.
And it wasn’t until I moved to Upstate New York here that I heard one of our local announcers on the…
Doing the high school sports use the expression off the schneid, which I had never heard before.
And I think in the context of where he was…
How he was using it, it seemed to indicate either a team had finally won a game or scored a point or a player had finally made a point, but I’ve never been sure that’s what it meant and I have no idea what the origin of the expression is.
Oh, there’s a very colorful origin involved in this actually.
Yeah.
That’s exactly right because it’s a clipping of the word Schneider.
Now, just like you say, you’re gonna encounter this in sports where a team or a player breaks a slump.
They end a losing streak.
That means Mhmm.
If you’re on the Schneide, you’re on a losing streak.
And if you’re off the Schneide, you’re off of it.
But before it was off the Schneide, it was off the Schneider or on the Schneider.
Exactly the same meaning, but somewhere in the nineteen forties, cause it started to be abbreviated.
But it wasn’t abbreviated in sports.
It was abbreviated in card that’s where it came from.
It came from games like Rummy.
If you Schneidered someone, you locked them out.
They were on the Schneider.
You kept them at zero points.
There’s like a a particular way to play Rummy that I don’t wanna get into where you can actually do stuff where the other player just doesn’t score and you you Schneidered them.
But where did Rummy get Schneider?
As Martha says, it is a really interesting origin, but we get it from German card games like Scott and Schopkoff or Sheepshead.
And all of these games use Schneider in the same way, and, of course, German immigrants brought it to The US in the eighteen eighties or so.
But before that, we find it used in German as far back as 1730 to refer to a card game called marriage, which involved kings and queens and and kissing other players when they made a certain player or trick.
And of course, because of the historical interplay between German and Yiddish, it’s a…
It’s impossible to separate which language contributed Schneider or Schneider most to English, but certainly German was a strong contender.
And of course, I know there are people listening now, Martha, who are going Schneider means tailor, someone who makes clothes.
And it does.
It absolutely does.
But even in German, before this particular figurative use of Schneider was borrowed into English, it had already begun to take that new meaning.
So we borrowed the word and the meaning, the non tailor meaning directly from German.
That metaphor was already intact.
In German, might say, Austen Schneidersehen, which basically means to be out of the Schneider’s territory.
And the whole concept here is that a Schneider was a tailor, was characterized as being weak and poor, like somebody with no physical strength and no money.
So if you’re like a Schneider, that means that you’re kind of out of points.
You’re…
It’s as if you’re out of money.
Yeah.
Taylors get a bad rap in in German and in English.
There are a lot of phrases in German that mean mean like…
To look like a tailor means you look like you’re very sick.
What…
Would this start being used in sports grant?
That’s that’s Oh, yeah.
So it shows up in sports some…
By the nineteen fifties, but firmly by the nineteen sixties.
So you’ll find it sprinkled here and there.
Clearly, it came over.’
Cause you know the the card playing pages, the rummy and the bridge columns in the newspaper, they were all usually right next to the sports pages.
So I’m not surprised that there’s a little leap there.
Do want to say that in modern German, there’s still a form of this.
Austem Schneidersehen, it refers to being freed of all worries.
Basically, the equivalent of the English metaphor is to be out of the woods or to be off the hook.
Yep.
Yep.
You mean you’ve escaped circumstances.
Wow.
That is so interesting.
I I figured it had a German origin, but I had no idea what, and you guys you guys explained it very well.
Well, Ben, we’re so glad you called.
Yeah.
Stay off the schneid.
Well, now I can stay off the schneid after talking to you guys.
It is great.
Alright.
You take care now.
Alright, Will.
Thanks so much, guys.
Alright.
You too.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Send your language questions to words@waywordradio.org.
