English has hella words for penis too
penis dick rod johnson wiener willy cock schlong (is that yiddish?)
I imagine there’s a lot of words for it in many languages
I heard it this way on All In the Family: A schlemiel goes through life spilling hot soup. A schlimazel is the guy who always gets hot soup spilled on him.
When I was a kid, we got punished for saying shmuck. It was worse than the really bad English words, fuck and shit, so I still find it a little shocking to hear on network TV. Shmucks are unpleasant people, though. That’s for sure.
My parents were in no way crude, and we never swore around the house anyway, but they never found it a big deal. Maybe they would’ve if one of us had said it to them.
I have never seen an episode of Laverne and Shirley, consequently, I had never heard the word schlemiel before either. That’s probably why I guessed “schmuck”, because it’s the only yiddish insult I know.
Tallywhacker.
There are a lot in English as well. Yiddish was a living, every day language. Not surprising there are so many ways to express annoyance with your fellow human beings.
‘Ass’ can mean donkey. A jackass is a male donkey.
‘Ass’ as donkey is a common insult used by old-fashioned, G-rated British authors like P.G. Wodehouse and Enid Blyton. It’s a bit jarring to read sometimes.
A few years ago while visiting relatives in the UK, I saw a kids’ tv show on the BBC that made much use of puns about a fictional disease from the (real) Isle of Scilly known as “Scilly A.S.S.” I thought that was pretty bawdy for a children’s show, but my aunt pointed out that even though there is wide recognition that it’s a vulgarity in American English, “ass,” especially in the phrase “silly ass,” is an innocuous term for donkey, quite distinct from “arse.”