Talk:shyster

Wikipedia Edit History
This page was Transwikied from Wikipedia. Below is the edit history for the Wikipedia article. The online dictionaries I've consulted specify the word's origin in medieval German, not Yiddish. I'd like to see more proof of its derivation in Yiddish before I'd include this here as fact. Richards1052 07:08, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Time: 2005-03-14T23:16:09Z - By: w:User:63.225.174.87
 * Time: 2005-03-14T23:16:50Z - By: w:User:63.225.174.87
 * Time: 2005-03-14T23:17:51Z - By: w:User:63.225.174.87
 * Time: 2005-03-14T23:21:18Z - By: w:User:Noogz
 * Time: 2005-03-14T23:47:43Z - By: w:User:63.225.174.87
 * Time: 2005-03-14T23:48:52Z - By: w:User:63.225.174.87 - Comment: /* Noun */
 * Time: 2005-03-15T02:53:49Z - By: w:User:24.18.59.229 - Comment: /* Adjective */

Comments
Though I speak or have spoken conversationally four foreign languages, I hardly qualify as an expert in any of them.

However, during my three-year military tour in Germany during the Cold War, I had considerable association with German citizens, as I had taken German Language courses in college.

With regard to this particular word, the origin of the English word was given to me as derived from the German word scheiss for "excrement" (common origin of English "sh*t") plus a fusion of the German suffix (not the English one of the same meaning) "-ster" as in schuhster, which is a variant of schuhmacher meaning "shoe-shop", "shoe seller" or "shoe peddler", rather than an actual "maker" of shoes.

I was informed that the combination of scheiss and the German suffix -ster became the Yiddish slang variant of scheiss-ster from which the later English version of "shyster" was derived...being the actual English equivalent pronunciation of the supposed German/Yiddish-origin word scheiss-ster.

However, it must be remebered that my sources were taken from the common venacular, and from German usage in daily conversation, and can hardly be taken as authoritative.

P.S. I am also conversant with many Spanish, Russian and Japanese obscenities. It is one of the first vocabularies one develops when one goes native in a foreign culture. They largely result from ones own ignorance of the local customs. —This.