Columns

New: Letter to the Editor Re Bupkes

Charles Siegel
Sunday July 25, 2021 - 04:30:00 PM

Just for fun, here is the actual derivation of the word “bubkes.” 

“Bawb” is Yiddish for “bean.” It is spelled bays kawmetz-alef bays in Yiddish. “Aw” is the closest we can come in English to the sound of kawmetz-alef, though the actual Yiddish vowel is shorter. Bays is the Yiddish equivalent of B, pronounced bet in modern Hebrew. 

“Ke” is a Russian diminutive suffix that is used in Yiddish. 

Put them together, and “bawbkes” literally means little beans. In Yiddish, it is also used to means something of negligible value, as we would say in English, “I work for peanuts” or “for chicken feed.” 

Most of the children of Yiddish speaking immigrants to America used a few Yiddish words in a language sometimes called “Yinglish.” 

The heard the dismissive use of “bawbkes,” and so they used it to mean “norhing,” without knowing its literal meaning. They pronounced the kawmetz-alef as “uh” rather than “aw,” which is common in Yinglish. They didn’t read Yiddish, so they sometimes mispronounced the word as “bupkes” rather than “bubkes.” 

So, saying that “bubkes” is a Yiddish word meaning “nothing” is roughly equivalent to saying that “peanuts” and “chicken feed” are English words meaning “nothing.” It would be accurate to say that “bubkes” is a Yinglish or Yiddish-English word meaning “nothing.” 

The site you link for the meaning is obviously written by people who know Yinglish and not Yiddish. The comment about goat turds is a fanciful speculation rather than a serious attempt at a derivation. 

So please don’t shmutz up my heritage with goat turds. When you do, I have to reply by making much ado about bubkes. 


EDITOR'S REPLY: If we had a good English word for it, we wouldn't need to import Yiddish.