In a previous post I discussed "blivik" which I understood, perhaps erroneously, to be Yiddish. The discussion triggered memories of all sorts of specialized argot I got familiar with only in the bankruptcy court. Yiddish words or phrases were still fairly common around there when I showed up in the 70s. I was a latecomer: I didn't grow up with this stuff and I found it highly entertaining to try to learn to deal with it. Some of it was hardly specific to bankruptcy, and some barely even Yiddish any more: schmuck, for example, is more or less universal (but what of "guarantor"= "schmuck with a fountain pen"--?). Schnorrer and gonif may not be universal, but we wouldn't want to claim them. And what of
Rachmunis, as in "writ of rachmunis," as in "judge, we got nothin', and we are throwing ourselves on your mercy."
Schmatta, rag, as in "the schmatta business," aka "the rag trade," textiles--the industry in which (in the lower east side of Manhattan) so much of old Chapter XI was crafted (aka, perhaps, The Pajama Game?).
Schlepperman, for the hewer of wood or drawer of water who did the hard work while somebody else got the big bucks, as in "we sent our schlepperman over to clean out the warehouse." Not a made guy, only a connected guy (yeh, sorry, wrong argot).
Chazeri, as in one of the things that drove me out of law practice back to teaching--all that stuff on my desk that I never seemed to get to the bottom of, all those phone messages, all those screwed-up orders, all those headaches, all those--oy, I'm thinking of them all over again.
Are there other candidates?
2 comments:
I heard the late Judge Becker once refer in court to "In re Rakhmones". I think that was a venerable 3d Circuit precedent.
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