Jewishadj.
/ˈdʒuːɪʃ/, U.S. /ˈdʒuɪʃ/ 1. Of, relating to, belonging to, or characteristic of Jews or Judaism; designating a person who is a Jew.
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the world > people > ethnicities > division of mankind by physical characteristics > Semite > [adjective] > Jew
JudeisheOE
Judewishc1175
Hebrewisha1250
Hebraicc1384
Hebrew1483
Jewish?1531
Judaical1532
Israelitish1535
Judaic1569
Hebraical1601
Israelitical1609
Shemite1791
Semitic1814
Israelitic1836
Anglo-Jewish1843
Hebraistic1846
Israelite1851
Jewy1853
Yiddisher1877
kike1904
non-Aryan1924
mocky1937
Yahudi1959
?1531 R. Barnes Supplic. Kinge Henrye VIII f. xxxj They haue rynges and oches and other ceremonyes, so many that there is in a maner now no thynge els in the churche, but all Iewysh maners.
1549 M. Coverdale et al. tr. Erasmus Paraphr. Newe Test. II. Col. ii. f. viv In obseruyng of dayes, and in other Iewyshe rules.
1600 W. Shakespeare Merchant of Venice i. iii. 111 You..spet vpon my Iewish gaberdine. View more context for this quotation
1704 A. Blackwell Duty to God & Queen 14 The Jewish Doctors..observe to us, that throughout their whole Law thoughts are no where forbidden, but in the present Case and the other of worshipping false Gods.
1829 H. H. Milman Hist. Jews ii. 85 The Jewish Exodus, or deliverance from Egypt.
1874 J. R. Green Short Hist. Eng. People ii. §5. 83 A Jewish medical school seems to have existed at Oxford.
1951 A. Powell Question of Upbringing ii. 96 Yes—and have you seen it? A Jewish old clothes man would think twice about wearing it.
1970 Times 24 Jan. 7/1 It is now declared that under the law of Israel a person may be of Jewish nationality although not of Jewish religion, whereas under Rabbinic law the two are inseparable.
2013 Guardian 31 May (G2 section) 13/3 The novel is a sort of autobiographical memoir of Richler's teenage years growing up in a Jewish neighbourhood of Montreal.
2. derogatory and offensive. Extortionate; excessively concerned with making or saving money; stingy. With reference to anti-Semitic stereotypes; cf. Jew n. 1b and note.
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the mind > possession > retaining > niggardliness or meanness > [adjective] > extremely
Jewish1606
poll-groat1745
Shylockya1818
Shylockian1884
1606 T. Dekker Seuen Deadly Sinnes London vi. sig. F2 Brokers yt shaue poor men by most iewish interest.
1801 Bp. of Lincoln in G. Rose Diaries (1860) I. 426 Soane's office has offered only 19,000l...which is a Jewish offer.
1852 W. M. Thackeray Henry Esmond III. vi. 155 You ask a Jewish price for it, Mr. Graves.
2019 @stevekennedyuk 23 Jan. in twitter.com (O.E.D. Archive) Terrible, in my local off-license (which also is allowed to sell drinks on-premises), someone pouring wine for friends, recipient ‘Don't be so Jewish and fill it up.’
Compounds
Jewish calendar n. a complex ancient calendar used in Judaism, typically to determine the date of religious festivals, holidays, etc., throughout the year.The Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar adapted to the solar year, normally consisting of twelve months but having thirteen months in leap years, which occur seven times in every cycle of nineteen years. The years are reckoned from the Creation (which is placed at 3761 BCE); the months are Nisan, Iyyar, Sivan, Thammuz, Av, Elul, Tishri, Hesvan, Kislev, Tebeth, Sebat, and Adar, with an intercalary month (First Adar) being added in leap years. The religious year begins with Nisan and ends with Adar, while the civil year begins with Tishri and ends with Elul.
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1642 R. Cudworth Disc. Lords Supper iii. 45 The Talmud was not compleatly finished, till about the 500. yeare of the Christian Æra; therefore this Jewish Calendar, and these Rules concerning the Translation of Feasts were not in being, till about that time.
a1762 D. Jennings Jewish Antiq. (1766) II. iii. i. 115 Thus was the jewish calendar regulated by the law of Moses, which appointed the day of the new-moon..to be a solemn festival, and the beginning of a month.
1831 Morning Post 13 June Tuesday..is the 3d day of Thammuz in the Jewish Calendar, noted as that on which the Sun and Moon stood still at the word of Joshua.
1904 Daily Chron. 9 Sept. 6/7 To-night marks the advent of Tishri, the most important month in the Jewish calendar.
2018 Canberra Times 23 Jan. 18 Yom Kippur is the most important day of the Jewish calendar because it's the time to recognise our flaws and make up for them.
Jewish emancipation n. the fact or process of ending legal discrimination against, and establishing equal rights for, Jewish people as national citizens.
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1798 Monthly Rev. Oct. 214 Some of the arbitrary sovereigns of Europe..are said to be hastening to add Jewish emancipation to that which they have already vouchsafed to all the Christian sects.
1907 Jewish Q. Rev. 19 751 Several petitions in favour of Jewish emancipation had been presented to the Houses of Parliament.
2017 J. Israel in D. J. Wertheim Jew as Legitimation vi. 88 The Enlightenment as a tendency generated and shaped Jewish emancipation.
Jewish Enlightenment n. historical an intellectual movement among Jewish people in central and eastern Europe during the late 18th and 19th centuries, having as its object the modernization of Judaism and Jewish culture through both an increased knowledge of secular arts and sciences and assimilation with the general population.Also known as the Haskalah (Haskalah n.).
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1891 Pall Mall Gaz. 5 Sept. 6/2 Mendelssohn,..although the grandson of the great apostle of Jewish enlightenment, Moses of Dessau,..was nevertheless by education profoundly stirred by the Christological sentiment.
2010 N.Y. Rev. Bks. 29 Apr. 23/2 German was the culture of the Jewish Enlightenment, the Haskalah, which promised, since the eighteenth century, emancipation from the narrow life in Jewish communities dominated by the rabbis.
Jewish joke n. a joke told by or considered characteristic of Jewish people; (also) a joke making fun of Jewish people (cf. Jew joke n. at Jew n. Compounds 3a).
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1842 J. S. Buckingham Slave States I. xxv. 371 A Jewish Joke. ‘Father, give me the New York Star.’ ‘Why the star, daughter?’ ‘Because I like to read old jokes that Noah brought out of the ark with him after the deluge.’
1984 Roswell (New Mexico) Daily Rec. 24 Apr. 10/5 Jackson..writes that some players enjoyed ‘making Jewish jokes’ about pitcher Ken Holtzman, humor Jackson described as ‘crude juvenile stuff’.
2005 Time Out N.Y. 17 Feb. 137/1 Bryan Fogel and Sam Wolfson's unkosher comedy..offers two hours of Jewish jokes.
Jewish-looking adj. sometimes derogatory and offensive having an appearance resembling that of a Jewish person.
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1826 Times 5 Sept. Jean Copeland..was charged by George Ingram, a Jewish-looking boy, with taking indecent liberties with his person.
1920 Amer. Hebrew & Jewish Messenger 10 Sept. 408 Some very ‘Jewish looking’ people were seated near me, and their Presence elicited scornful remarks from some ‘Christians’ behind them.
2011 Jerusalem Post (Nexis) 1 Feb. 6 Campus security personnel acted as if they had been given a limit as to how many Jewish-looking students could enter.
Jewish mother n. sometimes derogatory and offensive used as the type of a person who is overprotective, overbearing, or interfering; displaying characteristics or behaviour stereotypically associated with Jewish mothers.
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1964 D. Greenburg How to be Jewish Mother i. 11 There is more to being a Jewish Mother than being Jewish and a mother. Properly practiced, Jewish motherhood is an art—a complex network of subtle and highly sophisticated techniques.
1988 N. Postman Conscientious Objections p. xvi I know the essays must stand or fall on their own merits, but the Jewish mother in me made me think that a word or two about their pedigree might get them off to a good start.
2013 T. Pynchon Bleeding Edge vii. 72 The kvetchy, spoon-waving source of free advice she lives in terror of turning into, known locally as a Jewish Mother.
Jewish New Year n. the Jewish festival marking the start of the new year, celebrated on the first (and in the diaspora also the second) day of the month Tishri (Tishri n.); = Rosh Hashanah n.
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society > faith > worship > liturgical year > feast, festival > Jewish seasons and feasts > Rosh Hashana > [noun]
feast of trumpets1560
Rosh Hashanah1594
Jewish New Year1794
1794 P. Russell A. Russell's Nat. Hist. Aleppo (ed. 2) II. iii. iii. 72 The feast of trumpets, which is kept the first and second of Tisri, is the feast of the Jewish new year.
1878 Harper's Oct. 768/2 This..is a Shophar, such as is blown in the synagogues on the Jewish New Year.
1938 Ada (Okla.) Evening News 30 Sept. 5/1 (caption) Jews throughout the world celebrated the Jewish New Year and began observance of the traditional ‘Ten Days of Penitence’.
1977 M. L'Engle Irrational Season i. 2 The Jewish New Year is over; it is not yet time for the secular New Year or the Buddhist New Year.
2011 Times 5 Jan. (T2 section) 11/2 My earliest fashion memory.., receiving two new dresses every Jewish New Year as a girl.
Jewish penicillin n. colloquial (a humorous name for) chicken soup, strongly associated with Jewish culture, and popularly considered as a remedy for all ailments or valued for its supposed restorative properties.
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1961 Partners Oct. 29/2 ‘It's not chicken soup. It's Jewish penicillin. Good for broken legs, split lips, rheumatism, sniffles.’ ‘Don't be so smart.’
1996 C. Roden Bk. Jewish Food (1997) 76/2 The soup has long been considered a cure-all, the ‘Jewish penicillin’, and the idea that it has medicinal properties has recently been backed by scientific research.
2016 Sunday Age (Melbourne) (Nexis) 18 Dec. (Food section) m8 I grew up on Jewish penicillin and can vouch for its combination of coddling and cure.
Jewish problem n. now historical or offensive (with the) a question or debate about the appropriate status, rights, and treatment of Jewish people within a nation state or in society in general (often in anti-Semitic contexts); cf. Jewish question n.
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society > society and the community > social attitudes > racial attitudes > [noun] > racism > problem or debate concerning
Negro question1801
Jewish question1821
Jewish problem1846
1846 Chelmsford Chron. 31 July 2/7 The Jewish problem was one of considerable complexity.
1891 Morning Oregonian (Portland, Oregon) 30 May 2/3 The leading Jews of England..aim to obtain European recognition of the great wave of emigration as necessary to the solution of the Jewish problem.
1941 Time 24 Feb. 102/3 Alfred Rosenberg last fortnight opened in Frankfurt am Main what Nazis call ‘the biggest library in the world dealing exclusively with the Jewish problem’.
2019 @cjane87 28 Feb. in twitter.com (O.E.D. Archive) She also appeared on a neo-Nazi podcast... And then she endorsed a book featuring a chapter on ‘The Jewish Problem’ written by a Romanian fascist.
Jewish quarter n. an area of a city or town inhabited mainly by, or traditionally associated with, Jewish people.
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society > inhabiting and dwelling > inhabited place > district in relation to human occupation > town as opposed to country > town or city > part of town or city > [noun] > inhabited by similar people > Jewish
Jewryc1325
Jew town1592
ghetto1611
Jewish quarter1658
mellah1809
Judaism1851
eruv1963
1658 tr. J. Ussher Ann. World 860 There are five divisions of that City [of Alexandria]..two of which were called the Jewish quarters [L. Judaicae], because most of the Jews dwelt in them although many Jews had houses here and there in the other quarters.
a1832 Encycl. Metrop. (1845) XXII. 294/1 The Millah, or Jewish Quarter [of Marrakesh], is about a mile and a half in circuit in the South-East angle of the city.
1991 Baltimore Jewish Times 8 Nov. 80 Located in the heart of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, the excavated rooms of a house owned by an aristocratic Jewish family at the end of the Second Temple period, are mute evidence of the destruction of the city of Jerusalem.
2019 Leader-Post (Regina, Sask.) (Nexis) 10 Nov. (Early ed.) b8 Once a bank in the centre of Havana's Jewish quarter, the restored Hotel Raquel offers stunning views of Cuba's capital city.
Jewish question n. now chiefly historical or offensive (usually with the) a question or debate about the appropriate status, rights, and treatment of Jewish people within a nation state or in society in general (often in anti-Semitic contexts); cf. Jewish problem n.
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society > society and the community > social attitudes > racial attitudes > [noun] > racism > problem or debate concerning
Negro question1801
Jewish question1821
Jewish problem1846
1821 Norfolk Chron. & Norwich Gaz. 20 Oct. 4/4 At the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, every Sovereign, by his Minister, signed a document declaring that the Jewish question supplied a problem unsolved for 1700 years.
1877 Pall Mall Gaz. 26 Jan. 3/1 Considering the extraordinary proportion of Jews to Christians in Roumania, the Jewish question there cannot be argued like the Jewish question anywhere else.
1970 E. Kübler-Ross On Death & Dying (1973) ii. 12 News agencies may be able to contribute their share in helping people face the reality of death by avoiding such depersonalized terms as the ‘solution of the Jewish question’ to tell of the murder of millions of men, women, and children.
1983 S. Bellow Let. 15 July (2010) 412 Israelis now hold a monopoly over all discussions of the Jewish question, which I am not too eager to challenge.
2002 T. M. Endelman Jews of Brit. iv. 153 In the late 1870s..while Britain was not gripped by the kind of Judenhetze that seized Germany, Austria, and France, there was, nonetheless, a ‘Jewish Question’.
Jewish stone n. now historical the spine of a fossil sea urchin, formerly used medicinally to treat disorders of the kidneys and bladder; = Jew's stone n. 1.
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1580 T. Newton Approoued Med. f. 84 Lapis Iudaicus, The Iewishe stone. This stone grounde to powder, & drunke wyth Water, breaketh the stone in the Kidneis: and..the stone in the bladder.
1708 tr. J. P. de Tournefort Materia Medica ii. xxv. 130 Jewish Stone or Tecolith. It is a roundish Stone of the shape of an Olive, being an Inch long,..of a whitish or ash Colour... It is brought from Sicily and Judæa.
1851 W. H. Cobb tr. P. A. Cap in Western Jrnl. Med. & Surg. 7 383 They took internally..the Jewish stone (the spines of the fossil sea urchins, which they found in Palestine and employed as a remedy for strangury).
2013 W. D. I. Rolfe in C. J. Duffin et al. Hist. Geol. & Med. 141/1 An actual stone removed from the bladder, or a Jewish stone, was first crushed and dissolved in vitro so that it would dissolve and crush the stone in vivo.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2019; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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adj.?1531