What does "yiddish" mean?

a dialect of High German including some Hebrew and other words; spoken in Europe as a vernacular by many Jews; written in the Hebrew script

What is a synonym for "yiddish"?

Common synonyms include: english, jewish, jewish, jewish, judeo-german, language.

Yiddish

//ˈjɪd.ɪʃ// adj, name, slang

adj, name, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun

1
a dialect of High German including some Hebrew and other words; spoken in Europe as a vernacular by many Jews; written in the Hebrew script wordnet

Adjective

1
Of or pertaining to the Yiddish language.
"As a Yiddish proverb has it: Badarf men hunik ven tsuker iz zis? Who needs honey when sugar is sweet?"
2
Jewish; relating to Yiddishkeit. informal
"Yiddish cooking; Yiddish music"

Proper Noun

1
A West Germanic, or more specifically High German, language that developed from Middle High German dialects, with an admixture of vocabulary from multiple source languages including Hebrew-Aramaic, Romance, Slavic, English, etc., and mostly written in Hebrew characters which is used mainly among Ashkenazic Jews from central and eastern Europe.
"Yiddish is a High German language […] two varieties of Yiddish developed […]"

Synonyms

All synonyms

english jewish jewish jewish judeo-german language

Example

More examples

"This is not Hebrew. It's Yiddish."

Etymology

From Yiddish ייִדיש (yidish), from Middle High German jüdisch (in reference to the language, more fully jüdischdiutsch (literally “Jewish-German”)). By surface analysis, Yid + -ish.

Related phrases

middle high german

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.