Hakn a tshaynik literally to knock a teakettle , meaning to rattle on loudly and insistently, but without any meaning, is one of the most widely used Yiddish idiom atic phrases. ref name wex Born to Kvetch , Michael Wex , St. Martin s Press , New York , 2005, ISBN 0 312 30741 1 ref It is most often used in the negative Imperative mood imperative sense Hak mir nisht ken tshaynik literally Don t knock me a teakettle , in the sense of Stop bothering me . ref name wex Aside from the metaphor of the subject of the epithet making meaningless noise as if he she were banging on a teakettle, the phrase gains from the imagery of the lid of a teakettle full of boiling water moving up and down, banging against the kettle like a jaw in full flap, clanging and banging and signifying nothing ironically, the less the contents, the louder and more annoying the noise. ref name wex The phrase became familiar to many Americans without contact with Yiddish speakers by appearing in two popular Three Stooges short films. In one, Moe announces he is going to the hockshop , and Larry replies While you re there, hock me a tshaynik in the other, Larry, disguised as a Laundry Chinese laundries in North America Chinese laundryman , pretending to speak Chinese language Chinese , utters a stream of Yiddish doubletalk , ending with Hak mir nisht ein tshaynik , and I don t mean efsher maybe ref name wex The phrase has become relatively common in English in half translated forms such as Don t hock my chainik , to the point where shortened versions of the phrase, such as You don t have to hock me about it proliferate on television and the movies, particularly where the speaker is intended to represent a resident of New York City , even if not Jewish. ref name wex Modern Hebrew also contains an idiomatic expression of precisely identical meaning. References Onesource date June 2008 references Category Yiddish words and phrases ... more details
Nofootnotes date November 2008 The Stavisky Affair was a 1934 financial scandal generated by the actions of Embezzlement embezzler Alexandre Stavisky . It had political ramifications for the France French Radical Socialist Party France Radical Socialist moderate government of the day. The scandal was described by the The New Yorker New Yorker nowiki nowiki s Paris correspondent Janet Flanner as follows Fact date November 2008 cquote The scheme which finally killed Alexandre Stavisky , his political guests reputations, and the uninvited public s peace of mind, was his emission of hundreds of millions of French franc francs worth of false Bond finance bonds on the city of Bayonne s municipal pawnshop , which were bought up by life insurance companies, counseled by the Minister of Colonies, who was counseled by the Minister of Commerce, who was counseled by the Mayor of Bayonne , who was counseled by the little manager of the hockshop, who was counseled by Stavisky. Stavisky Serge Alexandre Stavisky 1888 1934 , who became known as le beau Sacha Handsome Sasha name Sasha , was a Russia n Jew born in modern day Ukraine whose parents had moved to France. He tried various professions, working as a caf singer, as a nightclub manager, as a worker in a soup factory, and as the operator of a gambling den. In the 1930s he managed municipal pawnshop s in Bayonne but also moved in financial circles. He sold lots of worthless bonds and financed his hockshop on the surety of what he called the emerald s of the late Empress of Germany &mdash which later turned out to be glass. Stavisky maintained his fa ade with his connections to various people in important positions. If some newspaper tried to investigate his affairs, he bought them off, sometimes with large advertisement contracts, sometimes by buying the paper. In 1927, Stavisky was put on trial for fraud for the first time. However, the trial was postponed again and again and he was granted bail 19 times. He probably continued ... more details
Encyclopedia
top
