Joe Shmoe
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Joe Shmoe (also spelled Joe Schmoe and Joe Schmo) is one of the most commonly used fictional names in American English. Adding a "Shm" to the beginning of a word is meant to diminish, negate, or dismiss an argument (for instance, "Rain, shmain, we've got a game to play"). This process was adapted in English from the use of the "schm" prefix in Yiddish to dismiss something; as in, "Fancy, schmancy." While "schmo" ("schmoo," "schmoe") was thought by some linguists to be a clipping of Yiddish "schmuck",[1] an etymology supported by the Oxford English Dictionary,[2] that derivation is not universally accepted.[3]
See also
- Joe Bloggs
- Joe Blow
- John Doe
- John Q. Public
- Average Joe
- Placeholder name
- Joe the Plumber
- Schmuck (pejorative)
- Shm-reduplication
- Man on the street
- Joe Sixpack
References
- ↑ Feinsilver, Lillian Mermin (1956), "Schmo, Schmog, and Schnook", American Speech (Duke UP) 31 (3): 236–37 .
- ↑ "schmuck", The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.), Oxford University Press, 1989, retrieved 2008-03-12.
- ↑ Gold, David L. (1988), "Review of Yiddish and English: A Century of Yiddish in America by Sol Steinmetz", American Speech (Duke UP) 63 (3): 276–82 , p. 276.
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