I am sorry to see a respectable dictionary taking Sheeny for a variant of the adjective sheeny “lustrous, shining.” Attempts to connect the two were abandoned long ago. Such episodes teach historical linguists, who try to reconstruct the forms and meanings of past epochs, great humility.Ī few suggestions on the origin of Sheeny are, as usual, mere guesses. It is irritating to observe how the slang that surfaced in the memory of the people still living, baffles seasoned investigators. My database on Boche is large, but it contains no definitive answer, though the best French and German etymologists of that time (and later) dealt with the problem. The best example is perhaps French Boche “a German soldier,” coined during World War I. Today’s dictionaries are more realistic and include everything, with warnings, to be sure.)Īs a rule, ethnic slurs go back to some word or name in the language of the despised group (and throughout history every “alien” has been despised): compare Dago for Spaniards and Italians and Fritzes, used collectively about the Germans in wartime Russia. Ethnic slurs have become more offensive than the rudest words in creation. The joy of it! But curiously, my prudish spellchecker suggests that Sheen(e)y and Smouch do not exist. The sexual revolution emancipated dictionary makers, and apart from public radio and public television, one can see and hear potty-mouthed commentators and hosts everywhere. There was a time when lexicographers did not dare to mention the F-word and the “low” names of the genitals and bodily functions, or some law prohibited them from doing so. For the moment I will leave out of account Kike and Smouch and say what little I can about Sheeny, a word first recorded in English in 1824 (so the OED). Probably no other ethnic group has been vilified with so much linguistic ingenuity as the Jews.
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