From German Class: “Ich liebe Dich”
I can’t find anything scholarly that would indicate that shmuck originally meant foreskin.
Totally news to me as well. Not in any of my books, or knowledge of Yiddish.
Even if originally true - and it sounds totally like folk etymology - it hasn’t been true in usage for generations.
When I was in college, the school experimented with a then new-fangled language lab, in which we would repreat phrases back into a tape recorder.
My German never recovered from the day I sat next to a girl who kept repeating, loudly:
Itch Leeba Ditch. Itch Leeba Ditch. Itch Leeba Ditch. :smack: