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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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Can anyone tell me the difference between a nudnik and a nudzh?
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veteran
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Well, there both from the same Slavic root (probably Polish nuda 'boredom'): nudnik is a nomen agentis, 'one who bores, or bothers' from nudyen 'to bore, pester' (the digraph {dy} in Yiddish indicates a palatalized consonant). The suffix -nik also comes from Slavic, rather than the Germanic base of Yiddish. The verb nudzh (also nudge) is used as a noun also, probably under English influence: words changing syntactic categories without derivitive morphology, i.e., no suffixes needed. You see the same thing with the English noun schmier (for cream cheeese, etc.) derived from the Yiddish verb shmiren 'to smear'. The PIE root *n@u-ti- also gives English need and German Not.
So, what's the diff between 'em. Not much, I'd say.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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I understand a nudnik to be a pest and a nudge, a pesterer. One is an annoyance and the other, an annoyance who wants something out of you.
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
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Dear IP: Could it be that a nudzh is actively annoying, and a nudnik is only passively annoying?
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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<<..passively annoying>>
wwh: Dismissing the 'irony' of psychologisms (passive aggressive) as precedent, wouldn't you say that to act passively was paradoxical?
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
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Dear IP: There are those who annoy by being stupid, but may say or do very little. Then there are half-wits who butt in with stupid remarks.
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Perhaps, the innocent bore versus the malicious? I took a look at Harkavy's. He gives a noun nudy (i.e., nudzh) that is glossed as nudate 'nausea'. The female nudnik is a nudnitse, and the daytshmerish (German, 'fancy word') for 'tedium' is langvaylikayt (langvaylen 'to weary').
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
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die Langweile = boredom, verb langweilen = to bore
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veteran
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Yep, Yiddish is a Germanic language like English, Dutch, and German.
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addict
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addict
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die Langweile = boredom
Thanks for reminding me of one of my favorite words from German class -- when you're bored, things to seem to take a Long While!
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