This Schmuck’s Guide To Being On The Schneid

Lately, I’ve been on the schneid. My daily fantasy bankroll has ticked down, down, down, and just when I thought it couldn’t get any lower … I had to deposit money.

I know. Terrible. The worst.

DFS baseball has generally been OK to me through the years. I’m a low-stakes tournament player, and as such, I recognize there are bound to be long bouts of losing between winners. But this year has been mostly one long bout of losing. 

And when I get close — like I did this past Sunday, before (literally) the last batter of the slate, Christian Walker of the Houston Astros, hits a home run, knocking me out of a top 10 finish and into the 40s — I get the den boden unter den füßen wegziehen.

Yes. I get the den boden unter den füßen wegziehen.

That’s German for “pulling the ground out from under your feet.” You know, their version of “getting the rug pulled out from under you.”

Why have I lapsed into German? Because I couldn’t get the word “schneid” out of my head. 

Schneid. Schneid. Schneid. Schneid. Schneid.

Listen, it’s an ugly word. It sounds harsh. Guttural. The “schn” to start. I mean, can I buy a vowel? It’s so aggro. And the “eid” to finish. It sounds like a sharp knife slicing through a piece of paper.

Schneid. Schneid! SCHNEID!

So, being the curious type, I decided to go down the not-terribly-deep rabbit hole to find out where the term “schneid” originates from. And as you might’ve guessed by now, it’s German in its etymology.

Even I could’ve guessed that. I’m no schmuck.

Well, actually …

I am a schmuck. Kind of. See, the German language and I aren’t exactly on the best of terms. I need to get that out of the way before we explore the schneid.

As it turns out, “Edelstein” literally means “noble stone.” It’s the common German term for “gemstone.”

So that’s nice. I’m Jeffrey Gemstone. 

But get this: “Schmuck” means jewelry in German. In English and Yiddish, it means something completely different. It means both a fool and a not-nice term for the male member.

So in Germany, as “Edelstein” means “gemstone” and “schmuck” means “jewelry,” you’ll often see the two words together on signs like this. 

Edelstein schmuck. To a native German speaker, it means “gemstone jewelry.”

To everyone else, it means “That Edelstein guy is both a jerk and a fool.”

I’m never moving to Germany.

Dictionary, please

Anyway … schneid. According to Merriam-Webster, “schneid” has been used to connote a losing streak since the 1960s, and it comes from gin rummy. Specifically, failing to score a point in the game.

But it goes back further than that, to a different card game: skat, which is basically Germany’s national card game.

And in that game, a “schneid” is short for a “Schneider,” which is German for “tailor,” and as to the why … well, Merriam-Webster has a pretty solid theory.

In short: The phrase aus dem Schneider sein means you’ve scored over 30 points. It translates to “out of the tailor.” Conversely, Schneider sein and Schneider werden mean you’ve scored less than 30 points, and translate directly as “to become the tailor” or to “be in the tailor.”

And as it turns out, Germans think tailors are schmucks.

It’s basically a pejorative, according to the wordsmiths. “Schneider” is used to mean “poor wretch,” but translates as “poor tailor.”

Imma just gonna copy and paste a bit here to make this clear:

[E]r ist ein Schneider is used to mean ‘he looks very tired/sick,’ but translates as ‘he is a tailor’; and frieren wie ein Schneider is used to mean ‘to be cold to the bone,’ but translates as ‘freeze like a tailor.’

And before you go and slam Germans for being mean to tailors, know this: In the English, a slang term for tailors used to be “pricklouse,” and you don’t need a degree in the languages to figure out the etymology of that one. Sometimes the words just mean what they say.

So, yes. This here schmuck in on the schneid, tailors are horribly stereotyped in the German language, and I cannot wait to call some poor uneducated sap a pricklouse.

Life goes on. Schneid too shall pass. Time to build some lineups.