Book gook, cool Jonah, schnuckel

Question

There's a great Web resource called the Prelinger Archives, a collection of "ephemeral" films in the public domain:
http://www.archive.org/movies/prelinger.php
One film in the archive is called "Young Man's Fancy" (1952), sponsored by the Edison Electric Institute. (Fans of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" may be familiar with it, as it was shown in a 1994 episode.) The film is designed to interest consumers in new electrical appliances, but it does so by telling the story of a teenager named Judy Adams who tries to attract the interest of her brother Bob's friend, a bookish engineer. Judy's speech is laden with teen slang (or at least the filmmakers' idea of teen slang), much to her mother's consternation. I thought some of the dialogue might be of interest to AUEers, so I've transcribed a few selections below, with the times that they appear in the clips:

Part 1 ()

(2:45) Mrs. Adams reads a letter from Bob, letting the family know that he's bringing home his friend, Alexander Phipps.
Judy: For Pete's sake, wouldn't you know that goon brother of mine would bring home something that lives under a rock? Mrs. Adams: Judy, I do wish you'd speak English like normal human beings. Besides, I'm sure Mr. Phipps is a very nice young man. Judy: I know, but just because Bob is a book gook (bUk gUk) is no reason he has to bring another one home with him.

(4:15) Bob and Alex arrive. Judy sees Alex outside the window and gets excited.
Judy: Jeepers, is he cool! Really cool!
(9:00) Judy talks to her friend Sally on the phone about Alex.

Judy: Did he arrive? Man, he's postively frantic! A real cool Jonah. Tall, good-looking, nothing at all like the drips around school. Uh-huh. And he drives a real shafty (?) convertible. He really has it. Oh, and he looks at me, I get, you know, squishy.
(13:50) Judy complains to her mom about Alex's lack of interest in her.

Judy: From now on, as far as I'm concerned, he's just a schnuckel (SnUk@l).
Mrs. Adams: And what may I ask is a schnuckel?
Judy: Something to be left strictly alone.
Part 2 ()

(0:15) Alex offers to put a record on the phonograph.

Judy: Pick something groovy, Alex!
(Judy gets up to dance, but Alex puts on classical music. Judy disappointedly draws the "square" symbol with her fingers.)

(3:30) Judy and Sally fold laundry and talk about Alex.

Judy: Well, at first I thought he was real gone. Really a big wheel.
Sally: Well, it isn't the first time a big wheel turned out to be just a hubcap.
Some of Judy's slang terms also appear in a 1952 article in the (St. Joseph, MI) Herald-Press, recently discussed on the American Dialect Society listserv:
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0408a&L=ads-l&P=12130

To be "cool" is the desire of every teen-ager but the title of "book gook" (book worm) is to be shunned.
"Schnuckel" is an interesting one, apparently a variant of Yiddish "schnook". The OED2 entry for "schnook" includes this citation:
1943 S. J. PERELMAN Let. 7 Apr. in G. Marx Groucho Lett.(1967) 190 It's the story of a small schnükel of a barber who accidentally brings a statue of Venus to life.

I have no idea why Judy calls Alex a "cool Jonah", though. (It baffled the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" guys too they wondered if it meant Alex had been swallowed by a whale.)
It's fascinating that as early as 1952 slang terms previously associated with the jazz subculture ("cool", "groovy", vocative "man", "real gone", etc.) could be voiced by a WASPy teenage girl. And how'd she pick up a Yiddishism like "schnuckel"?

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]I have no idea why Judy calls Alex a "cool Jonah", though. (It baffled the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" guys ... "real gone", etc.) could be voiced by a WASPy teenage girl. And how'd she pick up a Yiddishism like "schnuckel"?[/nq]
Maybe teens in the NY area would know some of them from early radio or TV. Otherwise, I would blame the filmmaker and scriptwriter for an anachronism.

Wasn't there a "Yiddish Momma" on TV back in the early 1950's? Mrs. Goldberg is a name that comes to mind "I Remember Momma"? In my part of Wisconsin we didn't get a local TV station until 1954 or '55, and my family didn't get a receiver until a year after that. I don't know if the Goldbergs (Here Come the Goldbergs?) would have been on the local station. Same with the Sid Caesar show and Uncle Miltie.
Anyway, much of the Yiddish influence on our slang depended on a common communication device, and I think that would have been TV. The death of vaudeville brought a lot of talent into our homes and families, while a surviving vaudeville would not have reached children and common language usage.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]"Schnuckel" is an interesting one, apparently a variant of Yiddish "schnook". The OED2 entry for "schnook" includes this citation: 1943 ... 190 It's the story of a small schnükel of a barber who accidentally brings a statue of Venus to life.[/nq]
Leo Rosten says " Shnuckl means a customer overcharged by a dishonest salesman, according to Berry and Van den Baark ( The American Thesaurus of Slang , 1943)". I suspect it's not that specific however, and probably just means "somewhat of a shnook," or "a little shnook". Anyway, what would Berry and Van den Baark know about Yiddish?
"Shnook" itself is apparently an American-Yiddish coinage; according to Rosten, it's not so much a euphemism for "shmuck" as a milder version of it. A shnook is harmless where a shmuck is not.
[nq:1]It's fascinating that as early as 1952 slang terms previously associated with the jazz subculture ("cool", "groovy", vocative "man", "real gone", etc.) could be voiced by a WASPy teenage girl. And how'd she pick up a Yiddishism like "schnuckel"?[/nq]
How do you know she's not Jewish?

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]There's a great Web resource called the Prelinger Archives, a collection of "ephemeral" films in the public domain: http://www.archive.org/movies/prelinger.php One film in the archive is called "Young Man's Fancy" (1952), sponsored by the Edison Electric Institute.(snip) Part 1 ()[/nq]
(snip)
[nq:1]To be "cool" is the desire of every teen-ager but the title of "book ****" (book worm) is to be shunned.[/nq]
We talked about "****" here once and found it came from military use, the time of the Spanish American War. Maybe compounds (gobbledy-****?) came from that use.
[nq:1]It's fascinating that as early as 1952 slang terms previously associated with the jazz subculture ("cool", "groovy", vocative "man", "real gone", etc.) could be voiced by a WASPy teenage girl. And how'd she pick up a Yiddishism like "schnuckel"?[/nq]
That one's not on the 1952 list. It may have been some Yiddish-aware scriptwriter overextending himself (I know that's too obvious to be interesting, but someone's got to state the obvious.) The point of the film was, after all, to sell electric appliances, not document teenage language.

Best Donna Richoux

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]It's fascinating that as early as 1952 slang terms previouslyassociated with the jazz subculture ("cool", "groovy", vocative "man", "realgone", etc.) could be voiced by a WASPy teenage girl. And how'd she pick upa Yiddishism like "schnuckel"?[/nq]
AFAIK, it isn't a Yiddishism but, give or take the spelling, I'm told it's German for "snail" and it is incorporated in slightly exasperated terms of endearment used by mothers to lagging children.

It's even heard around here (which prolly means it occurs in Dutch as well) in revolting sweetyisms between bf and gf, e.g. "schnuckelpuff", used more or less interchangeably with "honey-bun" and "pookie-pie" and... and... sorry, I cannot continue.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]"Schnuckel" is an interesting one, apparently a variant of Yiddish ... barber who accidentally brings a statue of Venus to life.[/nq]
[nq:1]Leo Rosten says " Shnuckl means a customer overcharged by a dishonest salesman, according to Berry and Van den ... means "somewhat of a shnook," or "a little shnook". Anyway, what would Berry and Van den Baark know about Yiddish?[/nq]
It's apparently still in use, if this 2002 New York Times article is any indication:
http://webpage.pace.edu/pviswanath/class/articles/aeg4e43/finstat/enron.html "On Wall Street," he said, "the worst thing you can be is a schnuckel," which he said was the Yiddish word for dupe. "We were schnuckled on Enron," he said. "It was gloriously overvalued."
[nq:1]"Shnook" itself is apparently an American-Yiddish coinage; according to Rosten, it's not so much a euphemism for "shmuck" as a milder version of it. A shnook is harmless where a shmuck is not.[/nq]
Various etymologies have been given. AHD, for instance, has: "Yiddish , snout, schnook, from Lithuanian , mug, snout".
[nq:2]It's fascinating that as early as 1952 slang terms previously ... girl. And how'd she pick up a Yiddishism like "schnuckel"?[/nq]
[nq:1]How do you know she's not Jewish?[/nq]
Judy Adams? She and her family seem like WASPs through and through. According to information on the archive.org site, the character was lifted from a 1948 movie called A Date With Judy , which in turn was based on a '40s radio show of the same name. In the radio show and movie, the character's name was Judy Foster (played by Louise Erickson on radio and Jane Powell in the movie).

Book gook, cool Jonah, schnuckel

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