schmuck slang.
(ʃmʌk)
Also schmock (ʃmɒk), shmock, shmuck.
[Yiddish; originally a taboo-word meaning ‘penis’.]
A contemptible or objectionable person, an idiot. Hence ˈschmucky a., objectionable, obnoxious.
| 1892 I. Zangwill Childr. of Ghetto II. i. xvi. 45 Becky's private refusal to entertain the addresses of such a Shmuck. 1945 G. Marx Let. 16 Feb. in Groucho Lett. (1967) 51 He doesn't know I can write, in fact, he thinks I'm a complete schmuck. 1958 F. Norman Bang to Rights iii. 132 But as I'm no shmock I deside to play along with her. 1963 Globe & Mail (Toronto) 10 July 9/1 Only the pay-TV concept..can break the hold of the ‘Madison Ave. schmucks, the Gestapo of the television industry’. 1967 D. Skirrow I was following this Girl xxxix. 241, I know that one schmucky swallow doesn't have to spoil the barrel. 1971 B. Malamud Tenants 50 Art is the glory and only a shmuck thinks otherwise. 1972 J. Caine Hamlet, My Boy xi. 161 As soon as the shmock of a witness offered to testify on television. 1975 Harpers & Queen May 128/3 Schmucky agents and flacks and show-biz parasites. 1978 M. Puzo Fools Die xxi. 239 Cully felt some anger that this guy was treating Merlyn like such a schmuck. 1981 Times 2 July 15/2 Mary Gordon is extremely funny about the beautiful Robert..and about the Woody Allen-like schmuck in the apartment below whom she sleeps with. |