shtetl
/ˈʃtɛt(ə)l/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.92 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A Jewish village or small town, especially one in Eastern Europe.
Example Sentences
- "However, you are right to suspect that there is some connection between my carefully considered opinion of the Hebrew people and this marvellous recital which your waxy ears, full of the cheesy gunk of the shtetl, have been so fortunate to hear."
- "Most of the second-generation immigrant kids of his neighborhood had been […] as desperate to go to college and become lawyers, doctors, businessmen, and leave the teeming city for the suburbs, as their parents had been to leave behind the shtetls of Russia."
- "Said the dybbuk, “What do you know? In the shtetl where I grew up, the muddy village, we thought all Christians had tails and horns. And the Nazi soldiers carried pitchforks.”"
- "Albert Speer had a big vision for it during the Third Reich, with boulevards and gigantic monuments, and we definitely don't want that again. It's a collection of villages, of shtetls as we say in Yiddish."
Etymology
From Yiddish שטעטל (shtetl, “small town, village”), from שטאָט (shtot, “city”) + ־ל (-l, “diminutive suffix”) (compare German Städtl, Swabian Städtele), from Old High German stat, from Proto-West Germanic *stadi, from Proto-Germanic *stadiz, from Proto-Indo-European *stéh₂tis. Doublet of stead.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Inflected Forms
Frequently Paired Words
shtot