Today's Word "Schlep"
Published in Vocabulary
schlep \shlep\ (verb) - To drag, lug; to haul; to travel a great distance.
"You schlep to this village, you schlep to that one, you set up an ambush, you go back to base. Once in a while a mine blows somebody up." -- Norman Green, 'The Angel of Montague Street'
Today's word is from Yiddish shlepn "to drag, pull" taken from Middle Low German "slepen," today German schleppen "to drag, plod along, tow something heavy." "Schleppen" is related to schleifen "to grind, to drag along the floor" and apparently meant originally "to make slide." The original root, *slei-, ended up in English as "slime," "slick," "slip," and "slice." Latin limus "slime" is apparently a descendant of the same root, minus the initial [s]. Don't forget to double the final [p] before suffixes with vowels, "He schleps" but "He schlepped," "He is our schlepper," and "He is schlepping." This verb may also be used as a noun referring to a lazy, unkempt person.
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