: one who begs
especially
: one who wheedles what they want out of others
Examples of schnorrer in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
For ancient Greek and Roman satirists, the term denoted what many of us now assume to be the figurative meaning: a sponger, a schnorrer, a person dining at someone else’s table, at someone else’s expense.
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Jerome Groopman, The New Yorker, 5 Dec. 2022
Mel Brooks, who had an office adjacent to Grant’s at Universal, and who began with a slobbering fan-like admiration for him, after a few lunches together dismissed him as a schnorrer—Yiddish for freeloader, beggar, cheapskate—and ceased taking his phone calls.
—Joseph Epstein, WSJ, 16 Oct. 2020
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Jerome Groopman, The New Yorker, 5 Dec. 2022
Mel Brooks, who had an office adjacent to Grant’s at Universal, and who began with a slobbering fan-like admiration for him, after a few lunches together dismissed him as a schnorrer—Yiddish for freeloader, beggar, cheapskate—and ceased taking his phone calls.
—Joseph Epstein, WSJ, 16 Oct. 2020
Cite this Entry
“Schnorrer.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/schnorrer. Accessed 9 Nov. 2025.
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