Is 'shylocking' a racist/dirty word?

People in gangster movies and tv shows often use the word ‘shylock’ or ‘shylocking’ to refer to anyone who lends money at an extremely high rate.

I know the word is derived from the name of Shakespear’s Merchant of Venice character, who was a money lender and who also happened to have been Jewish.

My sense is that there is a underlying anti-Jewish feeling in people (Tony Soprano, et al) who use that word today.

Is the word acceptable in polite conversation? Or is there such a history of hatred and bigotry against Jewish people associated with the word that it is right up there with the n-word, ‘to gyp’, or other such terms.

I ask because an annotated law textbook includes the word in its index to refer to laws about criminally high interest rates. The term isn’t use in the actual law. Yet the authors of the law textbook put it in the index.

I wouldn’t call it a dirty word, but it propagates an anti-Semitic stereotype and is likely to offend people.

Pretty good question. I’m not sure whether to leave it in General Questions, as it may not have a single specific answer.

From the good folks over at the American Dialect Society, I can provide:

. That’s just for some historical perspective.

Certainly the word can’t possibly rank up with “Nigger.”

I read The Merchant of Venice 40 years ago (in a Catholic high school, no less) and even then we were told that Shylock’s character was often cited as an antisemitic stereotype.

OTOH neither of the two unabridged dictionaries I have have any flag or warning about the term.

It would raise my eyebrows. It smacks of 'jewing him down" or something.

A neutral word with precisely the same meaning is usury (noun; usurious is the adjective). I concur that shylocking would usually be seen as perpetuating a negative ethnic stereotype, even among those who would be aware of the source.

Shylock didn’t “also happen to have been Jewish”. The fact that he was Jewish was a major plot point in the play - at the trial, where he is trying to get his pound of flesh, he is ultimately convicted of being an alien (i.e. Jew) who attempts to murder a Christian, and is force to convert to Catholicism. You couldn’t just make him a Christian moneylender without rewriting the whole play.

There were some actual historical reasons if I recall correctly. The Banks and people you made loans tended to overwhelmingly be Jewish in that time frame due to the Church restrictions on loaning money for interest. Shylock has taken on a negative connotation and the character was not a shining example of humanity. However, Shakespeare had some legitimate reasons to make his character Jewish.

End of Europe’s Middle Ages - Banking in the Middle Ages

In parts of the middle ages, that might have been true, but by Shakespeare’s time, it wasn’t anymore. By then, Italians were doing most of the moneylending.

Agreed, but the tradition of moneylenders being Jewish was still in place. Many if not most moneylenders were still Jewish, I thought, having had the head start.

Is that correct? I thought even in Shakespeare’s time it was mostly Jews and Germanic people. I did not ever read about the Italians taking over.

Jim

So, did the Church have interest-free loans then, or what?

Yes, all loans were supposed to be done interest-free, out of friendship and christian charity toward your neighbors.

But of course, there were lots of sneaky ways used to get around this prohibition:

  • you had to deliver the loan (cash, in those days) to the borrower, so your servants & some guards carried it to their house – and there was a ‘carrying charge’ for this service, which was usually a percentage of the loan. But that’s not interest.
  • the loan was interest-free, but for a short time (like a week or two). After that, there were ‘late-payment penalties’, which increased for each month that you didn’t pay. But that’s not interest.
  • there was no loan, just a purchase with a higher price, but ‘time payments’. You bought a horse from the lender, that would normally sell for 100 sheckels in cash. You agreed to pay 30 sheckels each quarter for a year, totaling 120 sheckels. But you had simply not bargained as well as the buyer with cash in hand, so you paid 20 sheckels more over one year. But that’s not interest.

All of these word games are still used today, in Islamic Banking, since fundamentalist Islamic rules do not allow interest.

The two big big banks around 1500 were the Medici out of Florence and the Fuggers out of Augsburg-- the former eclipse the latter pretty early in the 16th c. I’m not sure when the Genoans really get into it-- it’s possible that by Shakespeare’s time that they were dominant. Before the Dutch in any case.

Where are you getting your information? Or are you jesting?

Slightly off topic, but pertinent, Bricker’s brief history of the change in loan policy within the church:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=6170884&highlight=loan*#post6170884

The Jews had been expelled from England in 1290. With the exception of a few Marranos like Rodrigo Lopez, there were no Jews in England at Shakespeare’s time. They weren’t allowed back until the Commonwealth.

As a jew, if you call me a shylock or accuse me of shylocking, you are likely to get punched in the face. And I am not a violent person.

If you refer to someone else this way, I will just think you are an ingnorant ass, but probably not say anything (because I am, like I said, a rather passive/cowerdly person)

I wouldn’t be quite as offended as if you called me a kike. But it would be up there.

As a person probably a bit older than you, I’m amazed that “kike” wouldn’t be more of an insult.

Not really my place, but I’m pretty sure he was saying that being called a shylock would not be as much of an insult as being called a kike, but that it would still provoke a pretty strong reaction.

As to the OP…

Huh. Color me surprised. I’d never really heard shylock used as an anti-semitic phrase (of course, I haven’t heard it used much at all in my life, but still), just as a criticism that the individual was behaving in an undesirable way (ie, like the character Shylock). I’d understood that Shylock was jewish, and that it was significant to the plot (“If you prick us, do we not bleed?”), but I guess having never read or seen Merchant of Venice might be part of my ignorance on the matter. To put it simply, had I been asked without reading this thread, I would’ve answered “When used to criticize a jewish individual, institution, or jewish people, yes. But as often as not it is simply being used to compare an individual to a specific character for behaving in what is seen as a cold-hearted, greedy manner.”

Well, consider my ignorance fought.

I looked around on Wikipedia and found this article on Islamic banking. Very interesting read. The article is quite a bit longer, but here are a few quote of interest to me: