I was surprised that a friend didn?t understand the word kibitz, when I used it the other day. It is a Yiddish word that, in its simplest sense, means to complain.

But, like many Yiddish words, kibitz is capable of being used so that its meaning is shaded in a variety of different ways according to the circumstances.

I was using it to suggest frivolous, unwanted complaining, but it can also mean wisecracking, it can mean teasing and it can mean second guessing, or criticising. It is one of many bits of Yiddish that have entered the English language, and are now understood by English speakers everywhere.

Bagel, schmaltz, shlep, nosh, mish-mash, shamus, dreck? they?re all words that most of us understand when we hear them, even though we might not use all of them in our own speech.

What we do use more commonly, even though we may not understand quite where they come from, is a wide variety of Yiddish phrases and patterns of speech. For example:

Get lost.

You should live so long.

I need that like a hole in the head.

All right, already. I should have such luck.

On him, it looks good.

Yiddish is a language of irrepressible good humour. Leo Rosten was an American writer and scholar who made a study of it during his life. He wrote in his book The Joys of Yiddish that ?Yiddish is a language of exceptional charm.

Like any street gamin who has survived unnameable adversities, it is bright, audacious, mischievous? I think it is a tongue that never takes its tongue out of its cheek.

?Yiddish lends itself to an extraordinary range of observational nuances and psychological subtleties. It loves the ruminative, because it rests on a rueful past, favours paradox, because it knows that only paradox can do justice to the injustices of life, adores irony, because the only way the Jews could retain their sanity was to view a dreadful world with sardonic, astringent eyes. In its innermost heart, Yiddish swings between schmaltz and derision.?

Humour is very much a part of Jewish life ? the gift of laughter is seen as being like the gift of civilisation itself, in that laughter is a connection with the divine.

It is an idea mirrored in Western thought in Aristotle?s maxim, ?Of all living creatures only man is endowed with laughter,? (there couldn?t have been a dog in his household) and must be, therefore, something apart from base animals and insects.

That connection between humour and the divine probably explains why, in Jewish humour, the sacred and the profane often stand together. Woody Allen?s famous little whine is a good example: ?Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.?

Here?s a little collection of should-know Yiddish words and phrases for the reader who aspires to be?well, well-worded, I suppose.

Ay, or ai, is the first. It is an exclamation in many languages ? used in Spanish, for example, at the sight of a beautiful woman, or a loose bull or something of the sort. Hai is Japanese for yes, and in English, aye means the same thing.

In Yiddish, in the form of Ai-yi-yi, it can be taken, in the mouth of a skilled user, to the level of art. Said going up the scale, it can mean admiration, envy or surprise. Going down the scale, it can mean dismay, pity, or regret.

With a sarcastic tone, it can be witheringly scornful. With a little imagination, it can be lengthened or shortened to express almost any feeling capable of being expressed.

What Ai can?t do, its brother Oy can. This is well known as the first half of oy vey, which is a sort of all-purpose exclamation used to remark on almost anything, but most often used as the equivalent of the Bermudian phrase Oh, de pain.

Oy also exists as oy-oy-oy. The difference between that and ai-yi-yi is expressed best in a saying: To have money may not always be so ai-yi-yi, but not to have it, you may be sure, is oy-oy-oy.

The word ending -nik, as in beatnik or peacenik, is taken from Yiddish. One of their most useful words is a combination of that ending and the English words ?all right?, as in alrightnik.

An alrightnik (male) or an alrightnikeh (female), is a person who has done well in life, but has a havit of being boastful or ostentatious about it. The story goes that an alrightnik was pulled out of the water one day, half drowned.

A crowd gathered, full of shouted advice ? ?Stand back?Call a Doctor?Give him artificial respiration!? ?Not a chance,? his wife cried. ?He gets real respiration or nothing!?

Bubkes (pronounced bop-kess) really is Russian for beans. But in Yiddish it is used to express scorn for something worthless, or for something foolish, as in ?I?ll tell you what I think of these cultural ties with Cuba ? bubkes.?

Chutzpa (the ch is pronounced as the Scots pronounce it, hrrr-ed in the back of the throat, so the word is pronounced Khootspah), means gall, or tremendous nerve.

The classic explanation is that chutzpah is the quality possessed by a man who, having killed his parents, claims mercy from the court because he?s an orphan.

Gonif is a difficult word, because it means things both good and bad. Its primary meaning is thief, or crook, or tricky character, but it also means a clever, fun-loving prankster, of a clever or ingenious child or a tricky character.

Hotzeplotz is really a town in Silesia, but in Yiddish, it?s used to indicate a place way out of the way, as in ?I went from here to Hotzeplotz looking for you.?

Klutz comes from German, in which it means a heavy person. In Yiddish, it means an inept blockhead, a bungler. Mr Meyer was ill in the hospital. The lodge secretary, Mr Glotz, visited him and told him the lodge had passed an official resolution that he should get well and live to 110. ?It was an official resolution,? he said, ?it passed 14 to seven.? That?s a klutz.

K?nocker is pronounced with a hard K, as in kanocker. Useful word. A knocker is a big shot, a show-off. Someone who?s good and knows it? someone who does the Times crossword puzzle with a pen, for example.

Kvetch is another all-purpose word. It means to squeeze, to pinch, to eke out. ?Don?t kvetch the peaches.? ?He?ll kvetch this deal down to the last decimal point.?

It also means to fuss ineffectually, to fret or complain. It can also mean to stall or show reluctance. One of those lapel pins sold down in the Lower East Side says ?Kafka is a Kvetch!?

Kvitch may look like kvetch, but it isn?t. It?s a little scream of horror, not real horror?but a shriek that isn?t supposed to be taken seriously, like that made by a woman who sees a mouse. ?Everyone was running around ? the kvitching could drive you crazy.?

Schlemiel is an inept, bumbling person. A schlemiel is a born loser, a butter-fingers. He?s a man who falls on his back, and breaks his nose.

A schlemiel is always knocking things off a table, and his close relative, a nebech or nebbish, also a born loser but in a slightly more pathetic way, always picks them up. You can feel sorry for a nebech, but not for a schlemiel.

Shmooze is used these days to describe what businessmen do at cocktail parties - networking through aimless chat, as you might say. But it means more than that.

A shmooze is a heart-to-heart talk, as in ?there?s nothing better, if you want to get something off your chest, than a shmooze with a friend?.

Tschochke, or tsatske is another useful word - one for which there is no English equivalent. It?s an inexpensive, unimportant thing ? a souvenir. People have tschockes on their mantelpieces or displayed in cabinets at home. It can also mean a sexy, but empty-headed female.

A yenta is a vulgar woman ? a gossipy scandal-spreader, someone unable to keep a secret. Two yentas, the story goes, met in Miami. ?So tell me,? one asks the other, ?have you been through the menopause yet?? ?The menopause? I haven?t even been through the Fontainebleu yet.?

So, to go back to the word that got us into this in the first place ? kibitz. There?s a story about a man called Stein, who won a big prize in a lottery one day.

A kibitzer asked him why he picked the winning number, 63. ?It came to me in a dream,? Stein said. ?I dreamed I was in a theatre, and on the stage was a chorus of sevens - each dancer a number seven, in a line, exactly eight ?sevens? long. So I chose 63.

?But eight times seven is 56, not 63,? the kibitzer said.

?So okay,? chuckled Stein. ?You be the mathematician.?

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