Vocabulary - Today's Word "Schlep"

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Today's Word "Schlep"

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.

This news arrived on: 09/13/2005

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Posted Comments:

09-22-2008 10:44

Stephen Berr wrote:

Schlep

Schlep is not only a verb, but is also a noun, as in "he is such a schlep", or "don't be a schlepper". In these cases the word drag now becomes a noun as well. "Don't be such a drag", or "he is such a drag". A schlep is also a slovenly dressed person. "You look like such a schlep". I don't rememberthewe terms being applied to a woman - it has always been a thing a man would be. I may be wrong about this last point though.