Kim Pearson

© 2003-4. All Rights Reserved

Yid ¹(jId), slang. Also Yit, Yitt, Yiddy (Brit. Iddy, Iddy-boy, Front-wheel skid, Front wheeler, Fronter).

Leo Rosten offers the authoritative etymology in The Joys of Yiddish: "From the German: Jude: 'Jew.' And Jude is a truncated form of Yehuda, which was the name given to the Jewish Commonwealth in the period of the Second Temple. That name, in turn, was derived from the name of one of Jacob's sons, Yehuda (Judah, in English), whose descendants constituted one of the tribes of Isreal and who settled in that portion of Canaan from Jerusalem south to Kadesh-Barnea (50 miles south of Beersheba) and from Jericho westwards to the Mediterranean."

To simplify Rosten's etymology, yid is simply the word used by Yiddish speakers to refer to Jews. It is not, in its origins, pejorative.

1. A Jew (male or female). [When pronounced YEED, the way Eastern European Jews say it, yid is an inoffensive term. Pronounced YID (rhyming with did) the word becomes pejorative -- a derogatory epithet used by anti-Semites.]

The following examples represent the use of the word yid in all earnest, in some cases with actual venom. Not all of the authors were anti-Semites, but they weren't afraid to use the term pejoratively for effect.

1874 HOTTEN (Leland) The Slang Dictionary is the earliest identified print source featuring the word yid. The fact that it was listed in a slang dictionary at that time leads to the assumption that it was already in wide-spread use, at least on the regional level. Hotten noted that "The Jews use these terms very frequently." (see footnote 3)

1890 Sporting Times (Leland), "I might, if I had poached upon the province of the Pitcher, Have devoted just a verse or two to love among the Yids."

1898 A.M. BINSTEAD, Pink 'Un and Pelican, "He also was what the Yids call a schlemiel; no matter what he turned his hand to, nothing ever came of it.

1912 G. FRANKAU, One of Us, "As the Yid knows well the slump-signs ere the slump convulses."

1935 G. INGRAM, Cockney Cavalcade, "Surely the Yid wouldn't take away 'crap'?"

1940 E. POUND, Cantos lii II "Sin drawing vengeance, poor yitts paying for ----------."

1951 S. LONGSTREET The Pedlocks, "At Princeton, when some boy was not admitted to a secret society . . . because he was a 'Yid' or . . . had Jewish blood[.]"

After WWII, most examples of the word yid are found in the writing of Jewish authors. These occurrences are usually a) an attempt to accurately portray the speech of anti-Semites from the period in which the word was in vogue, or b) self-deprecating humor. The yid / id rhyme is popular in these instances (see ROTH and STERN below), as well as other jeu de mots (e.g. Yid Vicious).

1946 A. KOESTLER, Thieves in the Night, "I became a socialist because I hated the poor; and I became a Hebrew because I hated the Yid."

1963 V. NABOKOV, Gift, "Then she went and married a yid."

1967 P. ROTH, Portnoy's Complaint "Doctor, my doctor, what do you say - LET'S PUT THE ID BACK IN YID! Liberate this nice Jewish boy's libido, will you please? Raise the prices if you have to - I'll pay anything!" [capitals are Roth's]

1968 L. ROSTEN, in The Joys of Yiddish, illustrates many of his lexicon entries with jokes or anecdotes from the "borsht belt." Here is one of the three he offers to illustrate yid:

"The Klan, deciding to harass Mr. Levine, who ran a tailor shop in a hamlet in Mississippi, told the school children to stand in front of the shop every afternoon and shout, 'Yid, Yid!'

The children set to their work with enthusiasm. Out came Mr. Levine. 'Thank you, thank you,' he said. 'If you'll come back and do that tomorrow, I'll give each of you a dime.' The next day the children came back - with reinforcements; and after the hooting began, Mr. Levine distributed dimes to each kleine Klanner.

The following day - more children, more catcalls. But this time Mr. Levine only distributed nickels.

On the morrow the children returned, but got not a penny. 'What's the idea?' they wanted to know.

'I'm sorry kids, but I can't afford any more advertising,' sighed Mr. Levine.

The children never came back.

1971 B.MALAMUD, Tenants, "Then they go to the synagogue late at night, . . . and make Yid noises, praying."

1992 D. STERN, The New Republic, "The Ego and the Yid" (the title of a book review. The article reviews two recent books concerning themselves with Freud's Jewishness and sexuality.)

1999 Z. GINOR, Judaism, "When the poet Abba Kovner calls himself 'meteor-Yid,' he claims for himself a complex identity. The enigmatic natural phenomenon, its brilliance, its heavenly source, its effect on the universe and its precarious existence are but a few of the associations which come to mind . . . [T]his self-proclamation borders on a fine, indeed, a hidden sense of the poet's possible self-image, where he perceives himself as a natural phenomenon of a rather grand, if not monumental scale."

2001 From www.klezmershack.com, a manifesto by the band Yid Vicious:

"Yid Vicious is trying to bring klezmer to Wisconsin, which I believe is a HoChunk Indian word for 'Whitebread.' In spite of the punk connection the name implies, we play a fairly straightforward brand of klezmer, or at least as straightforward as you should expect from a group whose musical backgrounds range from classical Javanese gamelon to Celtic . . . We play at a variety of venues and events in Madison, Milwaukee, and occasionally Chicago, and are available for weddings, Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, anarchist picnics, and lumberjack competitions [.]"

2. orig. Brit. A supporter of the Tottenham Hotspurs football (soccer) team.

Tony Thorne writes, "Ever since the fictional racist TV character Alf Garnett, in his capacity as a West Ham supporter, characterized the average Spurs crowd/board, etc. as 'a bunch of Yids,' the team/crowd, etc. have been taunted with the name and adopted it as a badge of pride, replying with cries of "Yiddo, Yiddo" when challenged." Alf Garnett was one of the main characters in the popular British TV series "Till Death Do Us Part" (ran from 1965 - 1975). The American remake of the show was, of course, "All in The Family," with Alf Garnett reborn as Archie Bunker.

Fans of the Hotspurs are frequently referred to as the "Yid Army," and both the team and its fans don't mind being called "Jew" or "Yiddo." Fan web sites are rich in fight songs, mostly off-color, of which I have given a brief example.

1989 GRAFFITO "West Ham kills Yids."

1996 M. PERRYMAN, New Statesman, "Spurs are followed round the country by the richly ironic Yid Army. Not for us a dully predictable tag such as Coventry City's 'Big Fat Ron's Sky-Blue Army,' or Newcastle's black and white, tear-jerking 'Toon Army.' No: after putting up with anti-Semitic jibing for too long, we're flying our Stars of David with pride and celebrating our marginality."

2001 J. DUGGAN www.topspurs.com

"I'm only a poor little Yiddo

I stand at the back of the shelf

I go to the bar, to buy a lager

And only buy one for myself"

2002 J. Duggan 

E-mail to Prof. Pearson, February 15, 2002:

Ms Pearson

Someone brought to my attention that you have quoted myself with regard to a
song using the word "yid".

I would first of all like to say that the song was on my website as it is a song sung
by soccer fans and not my own composition and that it does not make clear that
the term is used in irony after years of anti-Semitic songs sung by other football
fans at my Club Tottenham Hotspur

I would be grateful if you could make this clear & if you would like any more
information on how the word Yid is used by English football supporters I would
love to contribute - as the term, while widely used amongst Tottenham
supporters, is not universally approved of amongst Jewish Tottenham supporters

Thank you for your cooperation.


Jim Duggan
www.topspurs.com

Green, Jonathan. Cassell's Dictionary of Slang. London: Cassell and Company, 1998.

Harap, Louis. Dramatic Encounters. The Jewish Presence in Twentieth-Century American Drama, Poetry, and Humor and the Black-Jewish Literary Relationship. New York: Greenwood Press, 1987.

Liptzin, Sol. The Jew in American Literature. New York: Bloch Publishing Company, 1966.

Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.

Rosten, Leo. The Joys of Yiddish. New York: Pocket Books, 1968.

Spears, Richard A. Slang and Euphemisms. New York: Middle Village, 1981.

Thorne, Tony. The Bloomsbury Dictionary of Contemporary Slang. New York: Pantheon Books, 1990.

Wentworth, Harold and Flexner, Stuart Berg editors, Dictionary of American Slang. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1975.