Background
Steinmetz was born in Budapest on July 29, 1930, and emigrated from Hungary before the outbreak of World World War II to the United States with brief intervals spent in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.
( Rumors that Yiddish is a dead language are greatly exa...)
Rumors that Yiddish is a dead language are greatly exaggerated. In fact, both the Yiddish language and culture are alive and well in America and elsewhere. English speakers take note: The Random House Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary both contain almost 100 Yiddish words that are now considered part of the English language. The impact of Yiddish culture is strongly felt in the films of Woody Allen, in Broadway shows like The Producers, and in television sitcoms such as The Nanny and Seinfeld in the tradition of the comic headliners of the Catskills. The world of Yiddish reaches out and embraces us in the literature of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Art Spiegelman, the culinary offerings of innumerable delicatessens, and the renewed popularity of klezmer music. Yiddish is rich and soulful, thick with pathos, full of humor and self-deprecating wit and sarcasm -- as a language it uniquely captures the essence of what, or who, it describes. If you've ever noshed on a bagel, or yelled at the schmuck who had the chutzpah to cut you off at the traffic light, you've been enriched and empowered by Yiddish. Beautifully designed and illustrated, Meshuggenary is a deeply researched and eclectic introduction to Yiddish language, culture, and history. It explores the basics of Yiddish vocabulary and grammar; proverbs, expressions, blessings, curses, and insults; and even the difference between Yiddish, Yinglish (Yiddish-origin words now part of English), and Yiddlish (words that sound Yiddish but aren't). There are chapters on Yiddish humor, literature, theater, and music; a who's who of Yiddish luminaries; and a captivating glimpse of the contributions of women to its literature and culture. So you shouldn't go hungry, there's a chapter on food with a tempting selection of family recipes. And if this little taste isn't enough to satisfy you, there's information on a host of books and Yiddish Web sites and Internet links. Erudite, accessible, highly informative, and enormously entertaining, Meshuggenary is an irresistible pleasure.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743227425/?tag=2022091-20
("My favorite popular word book of the year" -William Safi...)
"My favorite popular word book of the year" -William Safire, NY Times 6/22/2008 A fun, new approach to examining etymology! Many common English words started out with an entirely different meaning than the one we know today. For example: The word adamant came into English around 855 C.E. as a synonym for 'diamond,' very different from today's meaning of the word: "utterly unyielding in attitude or opinion." Before the year 1200, the word silly meant "blessed," and was derived from Old English saelig, meaning "happy." This word went through several incarnations before adopting today's meaning: "stupid or foolish." In Semantic Antics, lexicographer Sol Steinmetz takes readers on an in-depth, fascinating journey to learn how hundreds of words have evolved from their first meaning to the meanings used today.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375426124/?tag=2022091-20
( This is the only book to seriously treat the intriguing...)
This is the only book to seriously treat the intriguing linguistic and cultural phenomenon of the intimate contact between Yiddish and English over the past 120 years. Yiddish arrived in America as the mother tongue of millions of Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe. Not only did this language without a homeland survive in the great American melting pot, it infiltrated the majority language, English, with a wide variety of new words and expressions and helped to establish a new ethnic language called "Jewish English." New Yorkers, in particular, have adopted a long list of Yiddish words, including the well-known "kosher," "chutzpah," "klutz," "yenta," "nosh," "mavin," "schlep," and "shmo." Yiddish had first developed from language sharing as Jews of northern France and northern Italy migrated into the German-speaking region of the Rhine Valley in the Middle Ages. Sol Steinmetz traces the development of such words as bonhomme from the Old French meaning "good man" to the Yiddish of bonim, or shul for synagogue derived from the German schuol, meaning "school," which had come originally from the Latin schola, for example. With a rich collection of quotations from literature and the press, Steinmetz documents the unusually high lexical, semantic, and intonational exchanges between Yiddish and English in America. He offers more than 1,200 Yiddish words, expressions, idioms, and phrases that have melted into the English vernacular. Yiddish and English is important for Judaica collections with its two appendixes-one on the romanization of Yiddish and another of Yiddish-origin words, a Jewish-English glossary, a selected bibliography, and an index. But this slim volume is so entertaining and informative for the general reader that it is recommended for anyone who delights in word derivations and language.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0817302581/?tag=2022091-20
lexicographer Publishing company editor
Steinmetz was born in Budapest on July 29, 1930, and emigrated from Hungary before the outbreak of World World War II to the United States with brief intervals spent in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.
He supported himself as a hazzan while he studied linguistics at Columbia University where he trained under Yiddish scholar Uriel Weinreich, before leaving graduate school to take a post as rabbi of a synagogue in Media, Pennsylvania.
A widely sought source on all things lexical, he earned recognition from William Safire in his On Language column in The New York Times Magazine in 2006 as a "lexical supermaven". He earned his undergraduate degree from Yeshiva University with a major in English and received his semikhah (rabbinic ordination) from YU"s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. He worked for publishers Merriam-Webster and Clarence Barnhart before moving to Random House, where he oversaw Random House Webster"s College Dictionary as the executive editor of the firm"s dictionary division.
As part of his lexicographical research, he found such first uses as the sense of the metonymous use of the word "suit" to mean a bureaucrat which he found attributed to a 1982 episode of Cagney and Lacey.
His writings include works on Yiddish such as the 1986 book "Yiddish and English: A Century of Yiddish in America" and the 2002 work "Meshuggenary: Celebrating the World of Yiddish" which he wrote with Charles M. Levine and Payson R. Stevens. His final book was "There"s a Word for lieutenant: The Explosion of the American Language Since 1900", published by Harmony Books in the year he died.
A resident of New Rochelle, New York, died in Manhattan at the age of 80 on October 13, 2010, due to pneumonia. Jesse Sheidlower of the Oxford English Dictionary credited Steinmetz as someone who "never had a bad word to say about anyone", despite the fact that "he knew a lot of bad words".
("My favorite popular word book of the year" -William Safi...)
( This is the only book to seriously treat the intriguing...)
( Rumors that Yiddish is a dead language are greatly exa...)
His work was sought out by reporters and writers and was widely cited in William Safire"s On Language column in The New York Times Magazine, where he was credited as being a member of "Olbom" (On Language"s Board of Octogenarian Mentors), despite his age.
Married Tzipora Mandel, June 26, 1955. Children: Jacob J., Abraham A., Steven B.