Yipka

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, I’m Therese Inverso calling you from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

Wilkes-Barre, welcome to the show, Therese. What can we do for you?

So, the word is yipka, which my friend, when I was living in New Jersey, taught me.

Y-I-P-K-A.

Yipka.

And she told me it was a Yiddish word, and it means your house clothes.

And the wonderful thing about this word is that it’s not male or female.

A woman goes around in a house dress, and that kind of means the same thing, but a man doesn’t want to wear a house dress.

So Yipka covers both of us.

So she taught that to you, and now you use it?

Yes. Yes, I use it.

If somebody says, do you want to go somewhere, and I’ll say, well, let me change.

I’m in my Yipka.

That’s a new one for me.

I don’t want to go outside and wear my Yipka.

It’s definitely old clothes you wear around the house.

Yeah.

I’m curious, too.

I mean, when my spouse and I get home, we put on our play clothes immediately.

That’s what we call them.

Oh.

Well, you’re welcome to use the word yipka.

Well, I like that.

I like that a lot, although I like play clothes, too.

But I like yipka.

That’s nice, but Grant has a million databases on his computer.

I don’t know that one.

I mean, I just know shmada, which most people know for old clothes, right?

Right.

But that can apply to any old fabric.

Right, yeah.

I mean, I’m not a native Yiddish speaker.

I just know stuff from books, you know.

Well, here’s the thing.

So I talked to my friend yesterday who told me about this just to confirm it.

And she said she learned it from her husband’s mother.

But Aunt Eileen, who is 93, said, oh, that’s not a Yiddish word.

So-and-so made that up.

Oh, how about that?

So we’re not actually positive, but we still think it’s a good word.

Yeah, I agree.

Put that in the language.

Yip-ka for the clothes you wear around the house.

The stuff with the holes in it and the tear and the paint stains.

But it’s comfortable.

And if you have any self-respect, you don’t cross the street with it to get the mail.

You could walk out on your porch and pick up the mail.

You might answer the door to accept a delivery, right?

Right.

Yeah.

But the Yipka, you wear it around the house because it’s comfortable, but you wouldn’t wear it to the store.

Right.

So my friend Carol and I were trying to spread this word anyway, whether it’s legitimate or not.

Therese, I think you just did.

We’ll see how it goes.

And maybe in a few years, everyone will be talking about the yipka they wear around the house.

Yeah.

If we can get people to describe Mr. Rogers’ red sweater, his cardigan, as a yipka, then I think you will succeed.

Yeah, but he could definitely wear that to the 5 and 10.

I mean, that’s something to be proud of.

Are there 5 and 10s now?

There almost are up here in Wilkes-Barre.

I think they’re 5 and 10 dollars.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, Therese, thank you so much for your call.

We really appreciate it.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Yipka.

I like it.

I do too, but it’s not something that I’ve ever heard before.

And it’s not in any of the Yiddish dictionaries or books that I have.

That’s because her friend made it up.

I know.

But, you know, you have one hopes.

One hopes that you can find the answer out there, that it’s going to be in your books.

I did come across the thing that they used to shout in New York City when they would go down the street with the wagons to collect the old clothes in Yiddish.

Altazaken.

Altazaken.

And old clothes, old clothes, right?

Because when clothes were precious and you would sell your old clothes for a little bit of money.

But now they’re just like a throwaway commodity almost.

Right.

Well, call us with your language question.

We’ll try to ferret out the answer.

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