Shmendrik

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Shmendrik (Yiddish: שמענדריק), also rendered as schmendrick or shmendrick is a Yiddish word meaning a stupid person or a little hapless jerk ("a pathetic sad sack"). Its origin is the name of a clueless mama's boy played by Sigmund Mogulesko in an 1877 comedy Shmendrik, oder di komishe Chaseneh (Schmendrik or The Comical Wedding) by Abraham Goldfaden. The play was inspired by a sketch presented by Mogulesco at an audition before Goldfaden. Since then the word was often used as a name in the works of Jewish humour.

Regarding the perception of the word, The Joys of Yiddish lexicon stresses the meagerness of shmendrick compared to other Jewish schm-words for luckless persons: "A shmendrik is a small, short, weak, thin, a young nebekh". This is directly opposite to mentsh (more commonly spelled as "mensch") which, in short, means a "real" man of upstanding character and a person to emulate.

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