Tuesday word: Mishpocha

[simplyn2deep.livejournal.com]

Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021

Mishpocha (noun)
mish·po·cha (listen to pronunciation here) [mish-paw-khuh, -pookh-uh]

noun
1. an entire family network comprising relatives by blood and marriage; clan: I see you invited the whole mishpocha.

Origin: First recorded in 1855–60; from Yiddish mishpokhe, from Hebrew mishpa?ah “family, clan

Comments

[full-metal-ox.livejournal.com]

Thank you for a Yiddishism I’ve never before encountered! (I grew up unknowingly picking up a lot of Yiddish from Mad Magazine and Marvel Comics—unsurprising, in light of who created them—but I’d initially regarded “megillah”(1), “schmuck”, and “furshlugginer” as Comic Book Words, like “Zap!”, “Pow!”, and “Kaboom!”

(1) As in “the whole megillah”; it would be very much later that I learned that “Megillah” denotes one of the five scrolls that comprise the third major section of the Hebrew Bible, and particularly the Book of Esther as read during Purim. And darned if it isn’t referenced during a Magilla Gorilla (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magilla_Gorilla) episode; from Wikipedia’s entry on the show:

In Yiddish, a megillah is a long tedious or embroidered account, from the Hebrew megillah, a story written in a scroll. One episode has Magilla saying, "Such a megillah over a gorilla."