Tsuwm's wwftd is putz, which has to be used with discretion, since it can be an actively resented insult.
But I remembered that the German word is quite acceptable, meaning "finery", such as jewelry or stylish clothing. To check this, I searched and found an excellent German-English dictionary I had not seen before. I would have sent it to MaxQ, but if I understand him, he has filled the space he had vacant.

German English dictionary:
http://dict.leo.org/?search=Putz&searchLoc=0&relink=on&deStem=standard&lang=en

Uh, dr. bill, let us just say that if there were a yiddish equivalent to George Carlin's "Seven Words that May Not Be Said on Television", then "p*tz" would be on that list, indeed would be very high on that list.

Dear Keiva: We all know what a euphemism is. What is the word for the Yiddish practice of taking a benign word, and turning it into an obscenity?

My younger brother got a ruptured eardrum for calling someone a "schmeckelbeiser" completely ignorant that it was such a potent insult.

Dear Keiva: Re: schmeckelbeiser, I tried to look up "schmuck" which I have heard used in a decidedly pejorative way. If I remember correctly, in German it meant "adornment" of '"jewel". But I did find an interesting site about how often Yiddish words have been accepted in law, even in reported law cases.
http://www.law.ucla.edu/faculty/volokh/yiddish.htm

Reminds me of the two Jewish kids from NY who stole a camel from the circus and were riding it around the Garment District. After a while one of the kids kept getting off the camel and looking underneath, then getting back on. The second kid asked him why he was doing that. "What? You haven't heard all the people talking about how deformed this beast is?"

"No," replied the other.

"You mustn't have been paying attention. At least ten people have said, 'lookat the two schmucks on that camel.'"

I also smile at the Smuckers brand of preserves, with the motto " With a name like Smuckers it has to be good."

TEd, the usual set-up for that punchline is any of several tales, each ending with the question, "Was the camel male of female?"

Dear Keiva: but the sidewalk commentators correctly discerned the gender of the riders.

I wanted to ask here: is anyone actually familiar with the purported Penn. Dutch usage; i.e., "a Nativity scene"?

Rapunzel, dear, are you listening?

Pennsylvania German Christmas Traditions
... The "Putz". Nativity scenes are popular at Christmas, and the "putz" is the Pennsylvania
Dutch interpretation of the crèche. Related to the old medieval ...
http://www.amishnews.com/featurearticles/germanchristmas.htm

yeahbut, bill, that's still only hearsay! (or heresy)

Our other Pennsylvania Dutch kenner is Bobyoungbalt. He was on yesterday.

is anyone actually familiar with the purported Penn. Dutch usage; i.e., "a Nativity scene"?

Yes, it's pretty common around here.

Dear Rapunzel: Mon coeur se leve a ton voix.....

Definitely a word with two meanings, one high German (a Schmuckler is a jewel merchant , no more and no less), and one more colloquial, about which we are now all sniggering gently (yes, yes, honi whatever) . You can see its evolution from refined to bawdy through the picturesque intermediary of "the family jewels". There is a hilarious scene in the old movie _One, Two, Three_, set in West Berlin, about a Coca-Cola magnate's daughter and a would-be East Berlin revolutionary (played by Horst Buchholtz, as I recall) exploiting just this ambiguity.

It's interesting that even schmuck-the-bawdy has a negative and a positive meaning - one the insult, the-word-you-can't-say-on-television (as in plain old "You schmuck''), and the other connoting a certain fondness for a hapless, unfortunate, generally well-meaning bumbler (usually "You poor schmuck" ).

Ain't language(s) wonderful?

Leo Rosten's Joy of Yiddish notes that p*tz is one of the most highly offensive of yiddish words, distinctly more offensive than schmuck. *Roston is not available on the net, but
http://mat.gsia.cmu.edu/POB/AUG3198/0539.html provides a paraphrase.

Incumbent New York Senator Alfonse D'Amato called his opponent a "p*tz" during his 1998 reelection campaign. When D'Amato later tried to allay controversey by downplaying the offensiveness of the word, the New York Time cited Rosten in refutation. D'Amato lost the election.

Abstracts from the Times Website:
October 22, 1998 - Repr Charles E Schumer ... berates D'Amato for disparaging him with Yiddish vulgarism October 23, 1998 - D'Amato ... refuses to back away from his use of Yiddish vulgarism to describe his opponent, Repr Charles E Schumer; several prominent Democrats, including former Gov Mario Cuomo, join Schumer in criticizing D'Amato's recent personal attacks; October 24, 1998 - Schumer releases new television advertisement ... : unedited news footage in which he [D'Amato] repeatedly denies that he ever insulted Schumer with Yiddish vulgarism; D'Amato acknowledged making comment only after his own supporters said they had heard him make it

for those who may not have seen what triggered this thread, here is the entirety of today's wwftd entry:

the worthless word for the day is: putz

[dial] in Penn. Dutch homes, a representation of the Nativity scene traditionally placed under a Christmas tree

"In Pennsylvania, [those] who know Yiddish are often startled during the Christmas season by ads inviting the public to some company's 'putz'.... This German word for decoration means, in Pennsylvania Dutch, a Nativity scene."
- L.M. Feinsilver, Taste of Yiddish

"Putz, rhymes with 'nuts'. Literally, putz is vulgar slang for 'penis'.... Putz [used to mean a fool, a simpleton; an objectionable person] is not to be used lightly, or when women or children are around. It is more offensive than shmuck,... putz has a pejorative ambience."
- Leo Rosten, Joys of Yiddish

What is the word for the Yiddish practice of taking a benign word, and turning it into an obscenity?"

Don't know the name of such a practice, dr. bill -- but is it particularly a Yiddish practice?

Don't many of english's naughty words also have a familiar innocuous meaning (sometimetimes with that meaning being the dominant one) or at least originated in an innocuous meaning which has by now faded into the mists of time? For example: prick, cock, hell, damn, screw, ball, come/cum, pussy, and one where the original innocuous meaning has now dropped out of use: fuck

Following up on tsuwm's note, with a look at on line dictionaries. AHD lists p*tz with only the yiddish-rooted meaning, ignoring the Pennsylvania Dutch. Also, AHD gets both the meaning and the etymology wrong. It states:

http://www.bartleby.com/61/6/P0680600.html:
(A) NOUN: 1. Slang A fool; an idiot. 2. Vulgar Slang A penis.
(B) INTRANSITIVE VERB: Slang To behave in an idle manner; putter.
[note that tsuwm, correctly, does not cite this latter meaning.]
ETYMOLOGY: Yiddish pots, penis, fool.

This etymology is suspect on its face. We are told that although putz has meaning (A) both in yiddish (Rosten) and english (AHD), the english version stems from a different word "pots".

The accurate detangling is as follows: yiddish has two separate words, putz and potz. The former yiddish word has meaning (A) and has come into english with that meaning; in neither language does it have meaning (B). The latter yiddish word has meaning (B) but has not been picked up into english.

Definitely two different words here. German Schmuck does mean jewel and Schmuckler is a jeweler. The Yiddish word shmuk (Yiddish is written with Hebrew characters and I can transliterate it any way I want to) is likely from the Polish word smok, meaning snake or tail.

YCLIU@http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=schmuck