Word of the Day

: September 7, 2018

schmooze

verb SHMOOZ

What It Means

1 : to converse informally : chat; also : to chat in a friendly and persuasive manner especially so as to gain favor, business, or connections

2 : to engage in informal conversation with

schmooze in Context

Conference attendees will have plenty of chances to schmooze with the industry's power players.

"We're spending less time schmoozing with our co-workers, going from an average of 2.5 hours a week in the mid-1970s to under an hour in 2012." — Katrina Trinko, The Visalia (California) Times-Delta, 7 May 2018

Did You Know?

Schmooze (also spelled shmooze) is one of a small, but significant, number of words borrowed from Yiddish that have become relatively common members of the English language. Other such words include chutzpah, lox, maven, mensch, nebbish, schlep, and schlock. Though classified as a High German language, Yiddish also borrows from the Slavic and Latinate languages as well as from Aramaic and Hebrew. It was the Hebrew shěmu’ōth ("news, rumor") that provided Yiddish with the noun shmues ("talk") and the verb shmuesn ("to talk or chat"). Although originally used in English to indicate simply talking in an informal and warm manner, schmooze has since also taken on the suggestion of discussion for the purposes of gaining something.