chutzpah (a word I love, and learnt from The Girl)

Living in Brooklyn, it cracks me up that "chutzpah" would ever have to be explained.

Living in Brooklyn, it cracks me up that "chutzpah" would ever have to be explained.

I'm British... :P

You Brits, with your lifts and your lorries and your extra u's and your lack of Yiddish slang.

You Brits, with your lifts and your lorries and your extra u's and your lack of Yiddish slang.

And spanners! Only a Brit would throw a spanner in the works.

eta: And torches! Brits have electric torches, somewhat like our flashlights....

The Girl thinks he should play a dead patient. This would be something of a waste of his genius, though.

He does not have to start out dead. Have him do a death scene.

You Brits, with your lifts and your lorries and your extra u's

You'd think that as long as they've been using English they'd have it right by now.

I am giggling at the Brit-bashing.

Admittedly, this is because I'm half Irish.

ETA:

Only a Brit would throw a spanner in the works.

Do you actually throw a wrench in the works? That just sounds odd. (The Girl, being an American citizen, is always talking about AJs. The first time she asked me to pass one, I thought she was taking the piss.)

ETA again: She's just told me that AJ is not American. Never mind. Friends and I regularly laugh when she says things like "make a left" (what, dig up the road so as to make one? It's turn left) and similar.

I love it, but I'm sure that when I say it reminds people of Mikey Kellerman mispronouncing "Oy vey is mir...I'm so meshugennah, I could plotz." Although I have a special soft spot for "kvelling" which is surprisingly hard for an unhappy Lutheran girl in the desert to work into conversation. I try, though. ETA: I'm mostly not excited enough to give anything a full "kvell" but it's a great word, isn't it?

OMG, I'm really hoping I'm not having a Gosselin "The Judaica is teh awesome!!1" moment, there. Because I think those things are awesome, and I'm eating pastrami on rye right now AIFG, but I hope you know I don't mean it in a douchey, appropriate-y way.

I’m not ignorant (of theword’s meaning, anyway) and it still gives a knee jerk reaction. Yes, it’s a perfectly good word, but why use a word that is (or seems to be) loaded with negative connotation when there are plenty of others to suffice?

No, I don't think we should. I'm mostly angry about the existence of the other word, which is also used by ignorant people, and which is the real problem. It wouldn't even occur to me to use the word niggardly, I'd just say stingy, but I'm annoyed when people freak out when someone else uses it in proper context.

I remember realizing that what I'd always heard as "chewed" was actually "Jewed", and being utterly horrified that I'd ever said it. In fairness to myself, though, I think my mother actually did say "chewed". I also thought "gypped" was spelled "jipped" when I was younger. Now I avoid saying them both because I don't like the origin of the words, being insults from the start, as opposed to being a misunderstanding of the meaning of a word.