shonda, n. Jewish colloq. (chiefly U.S.).
(ˈʃɒndə)
Also shanda, shondah.
[ad. Yiddish shande:— MHG. schande (cf. shond n.1).]
A disgrace. Also occas. in phr. ‖ a shande un a kharpe, a shame and a scandal.
| 1962 Amer. Speech XXXVII. 205 The popular tendency toward bilingual diminutives..transforms the exclamation a shande un a charpe ‘a shame and a scandal’ to a shandie and a harpie—which many second-generation American-Jews use without thinking. 1969 H. Golden Right Time ix. 111 We were interrupted..by the arrival of several friends, nameless now but drunk then... ‘They can't be Jewish friends?’.. ‘They can be and are.’.. ‘It's a shanda..to them.’ 1972 N.Y. Times Mag. 3 Dec. 146/5, I was appointed groundskeeper and sexton of the prison church (the Jewish inmates..were aghast; ‘A shondah und a charpah!’). 1979 J. Heller Good as Gold vii. 269 Greenspan answered coldly, ‘You're a shonda to your race.’ ‘You're a credit to yours.’ 1983 E. Pizzey Watershed xxiv. 204 Do you remember when your Uncle Max was infatuated with that lean and hungry hyena called Lydia? I remember Julia screaming at him down the 'phone: ‘the disgrace..a shonda..’. 1987 Washington Post 4 Jan. 14/2 A Chicago rabbi..[was] transported into near apoplexy by the sight of the novel [sc. Portnoy's Complaint], which he was convinced represented a shonda. |