this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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Speaking of stupid and insensitive, I was in my 20s before someone explained to me that to reference "jewing someone down" on price was not a great thing to say. It seems absurd. I'd just never seen it in writing or thought about it--it was an idiom, that's it. You want to get a better price, so you jew them down. I guess I thought it was a homonym, if anything, but I didn't really think about it, at all. Big-time facepalm moment when it clicked for me. Likewise for, "I got gypped."
Those are the exact two examples for me as well! I thought I was alone in my idiocy!
Hell, "jewing someone down" was always a positive and admirable thing for me. Guess as a little kid I thought it was complementary to Jews and never thought about it again.
Not even going to say how long ago it was that I realized the reference to Gypsies. But it was a recent event, and I'm old.
How about "shyster"? I'm scared to ask...
“Gypsies” itself is also seen as a pejorative for the Romani.
Shyster has a reputation as being anti-semitic due to the assumption it is related to Shakespeare’s character Shylock. Historically it isnt, it refers to lawyers and the “shy” comes from German. It’s literally shitters.
Sort of like the word niggardly.
Interesting, so it's a Yiddish variant of Scheißer?
I don’t think Jews were involved at all, which is another part of what makes it odd that it’s sometimes offensive. There is a similar British slang word, and Germans also immigrated to New York where it is thought to have originated in the prisons.
It does have that certain feel about it.
My family always pronounced it "chewing them down," so I was surprised to see it written the first time. I was probably in college.
I thought it was "chewing" too. It's not a common religion here, and the two words are not homophones with our accent.