Reader's Digest 11月号のWORD POWER(単語クイズ)はYiddishから英語になった単語の問題でした。
Don't get all verklempt, but this issue we're celebrating the many expressive words English has borrowed from Yiddish. So have some chutzpah and go for it, but skip the schmaltz.
問題はいつもの通り１５問あり、いつもはだいたい１０問前後は正解できるのですが、今回は分かったのは "schmooze"(=chat) だけでした。
上記の問題前の文にも三つのYiddish単語が出てきています。 "chutzpah" と "schmaltz" は何度か見かけた単語ですが、"verklempt" (overcome with emotion: choked up) は初めて見ます。 とりあえず、 "schmaltz" だけは今回覚えたいと思います。
・Oxford English Dictionary: the fact of being too sentimental: At the end of the movie we drown in a sea of schmaltz.
・Collins Dictionary: If you describe a play, film, or book as schmaltz, you do not like it because it is too sentimental.[disapproval] Here, he crafts a vibrant film that will please lovers of honest schmaltz and cause no pain to anyone forced to watch with them.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: artistic works, such as music or writing, that are intended to cause strong sad or romantic feelings but have no real artistic value: Her second album was pure schmaltz.
・Vocabulary.com: Schmaltz is way too much sappiness or sentimentality. A movie soundtrack that's dripping with emotion is full of schmaltz.
If a piece of music or a work of art goes overboard trying to make you feel sad or nostalgic, it's indulging in schmaltz. Love scenes in movies are too often guilty of schmaltz as well. Since the mid-1930s, the Yiddish word schmaltz has been used this way, although its original meaning is "rendered chicken fat," or "melted fat," first spelled shmalts. It comes from the Old High German smalz, "animal fat."
Don't get all verklempt, but this issue we're celebrating the many expressive words English has borrowed from Yiddish. So have some chutzpah and go for it, but skip the schmaltz.
問題はいつもの通り１５問あり、いつもはだいたい１０問前後は正解できるのですが、今回は分かったのは "schmooze"(=chat) だけでした。
上記の問題前の文にも三つのYiddish単語が出てきています。 "chutzpah" と "schmaltz" は何度か見かけた単語ですが、"verklempt" (overcome with emotion: choked up) は初めて見ます。 とりあえず、 "schmaltz" だけは今回覚えたいと思います。
・Oxford English Dictionary: the fact of being too sentimental: At the end of the movie we drown in a sea of schmaltz.
・Collins Dictionary: If you describe a play, film, or book as schmaltz, you do not like it because it is too sentimental.[disapproval] Here, he crafts a vibrant film that will please lovers of honest schmaltz and cause no pain to anyone forced to watch with them.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: artistic works, such as music or writing, that are intended to cause strong sad or romantic feelings but have no real artistic value: Her second album was pure schmaltz.
・Vocabulary.com: Schmaltz is way too much sappiness or sentimentality. A movie soundtrack that's dripping with emotion is full of schmaltz.
If a piece of music or a work of art goes overboard trying to make you feel sad or nostalgic, it's indulging in schmaltz. Love scenes in movies are too often guilty of schmaltz as well. Since the mid-1930s, the Yiddish word schmaltz has been used this way, although its original meaning is "rendered chicken fat," or "melted fat," first spelled shmalts. It comes from the Old High German smalz, "animal fat."
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