Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Informal Excessively sentimental art or music.
- n. Informal Maudlin sentimentality.
- n. Liquid fat, especially chicken fat.
Wiktionary
- n. uncountable Liquid chickenfat.
- n. uncountable Excessively sentimental art or music.
WordNet 3.0
- n. (Yiddish) excessive sentimentality in art or music
Etymologies
- From Yiddish שמאַלץ (shmalts) or German Schmalz. (Wiktionary)
- Yiddish shmalts, animal fat, sentimentality, from Middle High German smalz, animal fat, from Old High German; see mel-1 in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“If homemade schmaltz is unavailable, you can use Nyafat or Margarine if you want to keep it kosher parve or meat, but if not or for a dairy meal, use softened butter instead.”
“The difference between great sentimentalism like Yesterday, Hey Jude or Let it Be and schmaltz is subtle but huge and the talent to pull it off is very rare.”
Matthew Yglesias » Mead: Obama Doomed to Fail for Refusing to Fit My Arbitrary Classification Scheme
“GROSS: Bobby Braddock, the word schmaltz is probably not a word that's used a lot in country music.”
“You could go totally pareve and not use any schmaltz, but I think schmaltz is integral to the flavor of latkes, and I tend to have them as an evening meal with other stuff.”
“But it might mean that sneaking the schmaltz is no longer necessary - that we can start embracing sentimentality again without worrying whether we should change our names and move to another town.”
“While MGM’s stuff reveled in schmaltz, Warners piled on the panache with a distinctly modern sensibility.”
“That schmaltz is a bug killer who smokes, they’ll all die of cancer before anyone would kill ‘em.”
“It's called schmaltz, people, and everybody's got their limit.”
“White House chefs will prepare Jewish participants 'family recipes, even rendering chicken fat-better known as schmaltz-for just the right matzo ball flavor.”
“White House chefs will prepare Jewish participants 'family recipes, even rendering chicken fat - better known as schmaltz - for just the right matzo ball flavor.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘schmaltz’.
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250 More Spelling Words
More words for intermediate and advanced spellers.
melisma, dioecious, jejunity, sialogogue, zingiber, zendik, dithyramb, pneuma, kachina, agiotage, baedeker, sabulous and 238 more...
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Yiddishkeit
There are a few short lists of Yiddish words, but none appropriate to the glory of the language, and none that are open. Thought I'd start one, and would love contributions. I'm tagging as I go, an...
schmuck, nosh, chutzpah, shtick, kvetch, oy vey, oy gevalt, shvitz, shtik, shiksa, putz, mensch and 94 more...
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wallace
Remington, Windsor, prorector, wen, aver, mottle, seltzer, tepee, lapidary, effete, sotto, presbyopia and 355 more...
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Four Initial Consonants
Words that begin with a string of four consonants. The letter wye doesn't count, unless it clearly isn't acting as a vowel.
chthonic, nschiego, tschego, schmooze, schmaltz, schnapps, schlocky, schlieric, schlieren, schlump, schmutz, schmuck and 16 more...
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Words
parti pris, eschatology, maudlinism, schmaltz, ethos, phantasmagoria, ethology, concupiscence, ethoses, ethea, logolepsy, lethologica and 1 more...
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Music of different spheres
klezmer, makossa, bagatelle, masque, coloratura, quadrille, schottische, boogie, fandango, acciaccatura, appoggiatura, schmaltz and 11 more...
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jeffreytwhitney's list
abecedarian, assonance, prolix, avuncular, baleful, borborygmus, accismus, atavism, catachresis, coruscant, callipygian, carbuncle and 117 more...
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MiaLuthien's list ♥
gambit, prehensile, coquetry, impunity, genuflect, ensconce, clavicle, delude, beget, castigate, life caching, convoluted and 478 more...
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inkhorn's Words
inkhorn, aplomb, apotheosis, asinine, avatar, bombastic, boorish, bromide, bucolic, cagey, canvass, digress and 991 more...
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azd's Words
adamantine, abatial, ablate, ablative, abrogate, accretive, acromegaly, acrostic, actinism, actinic, acuity, adduce and 968 more...
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stpeter's Words
abase, abasement, abashed, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abhorrent, abide, abject, ablation, abnegation and 3536 more...
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lanklenmot's Words
ineluctable, prelapsarian, bien pensant, prospero, preternatural, gratifying, iconoclast, cineast, persnickety, tumescent, galvanize, pap and 887 more...
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Interesting Scrabble words
Interesting words worth @ least 15 points.
smoochy, zareba, hyphal, djellaba, cloque, pyxidium, qindarka, squiffy, howbeit, chthonic, quinta, azimuthal and 262 more...
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...:::bella:::...
originally started as an attempt to collect words I found visually and auditorially beautiful, as well as psychically evocative, this has become nothing more than a grab bag of word curiosities, a ...
bergamot, jambalaya, bee's knees, heliotrope, hosanna, gamboge, aureole, filial, madrigal, multilingual, sacrosanct, sojourn and 1072 more...
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words from the German
kindergarten, sturm und drang, schadenfreude, zeppelin, blitzkreig, blitz, krieg, panzer, angst, nazi, zeitgeist, doppelganger and 107 more...
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Cat Kisses Favorites
leprechaunic hair, a dinky grin, strangled giggle, a waft of words, comatose fun, a grisly shooting..., jim bag clothes, to quench and fuss, shutter hole, tearful sludge, dead-eye blue, coughing curtains... and 97 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for schmaltz.
john Literally means melted chicken fat. Apr 6, 2009