kvetch
/kvɛtʃ
/North American informal
noun
1A person who complains a great deal: she emerges as something of a kvetch, constantly nagging Rick...
- Zoole, a hopeless kvetch, has good reason to complain.
- And I don't want to seem like a kvetch, but where's the dessert?
- Sure enough, at the end of his workday he is a kvetch who goads a black youngster into reaching for a gun and shoots him dead.
1.1A complaint: ‘They don’t make ’em like they used to' has become an all-purpose kvetch...
- To make the guest list, invitees would have to possess the ability to grumble, rant, complain, gripe, fuss, snarl, groan, scream and kvetch - preferably all at the same time.
- I have a kvetch about my meal being cooked in the body fat of a dead animal.
- My one kvetch was that not enough music was played from the Train A Comin’ album.
verb [no object]
Complain persistently: Jane’s kvetching about her crummy existence...
- Just think, if the people who are now kvetching about freedom of speech simply posted their names on the website, then none of the speculation would have happened.
- Coincidentally, he'd been kvetching to me about the lack of masquerade balls, just before I found out that there was going to be one.
- I stand to the side, watching, listening to him kvetch about my lack of proper kitchen equipment.
Origin
1960s: from Yiddish kvetsh (noun), kvetshn (verb), from Middle High German quetschen, literally 'crush'.