SHHHHH - THE NEW "NON-VORT"* IS HUNGER
*non-word by
Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe

Syosset, New York A euphemism is defined as the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant. In Yiddish, "orem" means poor or needy; "hungerik" means hungry.  For the "ersht" (first) time the use of the word "hunger" was omitted in the USDA's annual measure of hunger in the U. S., Household Food Security in the United States, 2005.

The number of people living in households struggling to put food on "der tish" (the table) declined by 3 million (from 38 million in 2004 to 35 million in 2005) after rising for five straight years.  More than 10 million people live with what the report NOW calls "very low food security."  It's a euphemism for "hunger."  What "narishkeit"--foolishness.

Hunger is not new to New Yorkers.  The late Art Buchwald, who spent part of his childhood in Forest Hills, Flushing, and Hollis, took his daughter, Jennifer, to a soup kitchen to help serve the poor, especially on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Alan King ("Name-Dropping - The Life and Lies of Alan King") wrote, "...the poor years you never forget.  When you come from poverty, you go one of two ways:  either you become a spender, like money doesn't mean anything (which I have a tendency to do; it's been said that if I drop a quarter on the floor and a bellhop picks it up, I give him a dollar tip), or you become terribly frugal.  Because you think maybe they're going to take the money away...For my father, the humiliation of not being able to support us, of having to turn in tickets for day-old bread (we'd stand in line outside the Dugan bakery, and if there was a stale or damaged package of bread, we'd get it), was compounded by the fact that he had to give up his home and move all of us in with my mother's father.

Roosevelt's New Deal didn't help my father much; the American dream didn't pan out for him.  During the Depression he must have had forty-two different jobs. He worked at a sewing machine, he sold housedresses on a pole in the marketplace (the housedresses were called Hooverettes, in honor of the president whom Roosevelt had driven from the White House), and when he didn't have work, we went on relief.  To this day, relief sounds better to me than welfare--it sounds temporary, where welfare sounds like it's a permanent way of life."

And what did the late Sam Levenson say about hunger?  He wrote ("In One Era & Out the Other"), "If we ran short of food for a visiting somebody, the code word came down the line--'F.H.B.' (Family Hold Back)... When his brother Bill's appendix kicked up and he was taken to the hospital in the middle of dinner, we ran after the ambulance shouting, 'Bill!  Bill!  who gets your strudel?"  And when brother David first gazed on the immense skeleton at the Museum of Natural History, his reaction was:  'Boy!  What a soup Mama could make out of that!'"

The U. S. government has vowed that Americans will never be hungry again.  But they may experience "very low food security."  "Far vos" (Why) the need for a euphemism?  The Agriculture Department has determined "very low food security" to be a more scientifically palatable description for that group.  (The Nazis tried to conceal their extermination program behind euphemisms such as "special treatment" and "final solution to the Jewish problem.")

Personally, I say that the new words sugarcoat a national "shanda" (shame)! Elie Wiesel said "Why is famine alluded to as 'the shame of famine?'  The hungry shouldn't be ashamed for dying of hunger. Others should be.  It is the only disease for which there is a certain cure."

Today we call a hairpiece a toupee  or a rug.  An ad for Thomas hair transplants said, "A hairpiece by any other name is still a cover-up."  Game management is still killing animals...hunting.  Halitosis means bad breath, and an "erroneous report" is a lie.  In hospital parlance, "no Mayday" translates as "Do not resuscitate this 'patsyent.'  And when Johnny Carston starred in "The Tonight Show," he didn't use the word pregnant ("shvanger"); he said, "in a family way."  "Indigent" means poor!

If we have "hungerik" people, just say so!

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___________________________________________
Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe is the author of
two books:

"Yiddish for Dog & Cat Lovers" and
"Are Yentas, Kibitzers, & Tummlers Weapons of Mass Instruction?  Yiddish
Trivia."  To order a copy, go to her
website: MarjorieGottliebWolfe.com

NU, what are you waiting for?  Order the book!

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