yen·ta
n. Slang
- A person, especially a woman, who is meddlesome or gossipy.
[Yiddish yente, back-formation from the woman's name Yente, alteration of Yentl, from Old Italian Gentile, from gentile, amiable, highborn, from Latin gent
lis, of the same clan. See gentle.]Update: One interesting thing I was going to comment on - many of the steps in this etymology are interesting, but the last step, the back formation, is particularly so. The L ending of Yentl was part of the word, coming from Old Italian gentile. However, it was interpreted as the diminutive, a suffix indicating familiarity. Thus, e.g. Yossele. Thus, they took away this pseudo-diminutive to generate Yente -- thus, this is a back formation.
2 comments:
Interesting - and it's also connected to the English word "gentile", which "during 14c. to mean(t) both 'one who is not a Christian' and 'one who is not a Jew.'"
(from http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=gentile )
I think one should look at Germanic based languages for similar sounds or words. In Norsk, the word "jente" (pronounced yenta) means girl. Perhaps the origin of Yenta comes from a simple word for female?
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