baba – old grandmother; or great grandmother; variation bobchie
When I visited Bobchie, she gave me a two dollar bill.
boodah – an old junkie house
The police discovered a meth lab in a boodah.
boothka – a closed in porch; an enclosure that one passes through before entering a house
Take off your boots in the boothka so you don’t track snow all over my clean floor.
Bozhe zapwath – thank you. Literally translated as "God will pay you." My father uses this phrase when talking about performing a task for which there is no compensation, or doing a thankless favor.
I’m a salaried employee, so when I work on Saturday, it’s for Bozhe zapwath.
caca – feces
Hey Ma, I need to go caca in the potty.
caca baah – poison.
Don’t put that in your mouth. That’s caca baah!
check-eye – wait; be patient
When I went to pick up my new glasses, the optometrist said "Check-eye, I’m with another patient right now."
cheeho – be quiet; keep still
The teacher walked into the noisy classroom and told the class, "Cheeho! Cheeho!"
chochi – aunt; variation chutka
Chochi Debbie took me to the bowling alley.
dupa – buttocks
On the Internet, there are a lot of websites with pictures of ladies with bare dupas.
figa – nothing or zero; variation figaz makiem
If you kids don’t behave, you’ll get figaz makiem for Christmas.
gotchie – underwear
Make sure you are wearing clean gotchies in case you are in an accident.
mombrathy – to repeat oneself repeatedly, usually complaining. Excessive mombrathying is referred to as mombrathying and fafrathying. One can either mombrathy, or mombrathy and fafrathy. But one cannot just fafrathy.
Mary was mombrathying and fafrathying about Lovey getting the house after their mother died.
pahpoo – to eat
Don’t spit out your food, pahpoo nice.
pawnie zawsdrany – a lazy woman; a prima donna.
She sat there like a pawnie zawsdrany, and didn’t lift a finger to help us.
peachka - vagina
Stella has a website on the Internet where she shows everyone her peachka.
pytashka – a small piece of luggage; a duffle bag
Make sure that you have clean gotchies to pack in your pytashka for your trip to Old Country.
Note: My grandfather and his brother, Uncle John, used to refer to my great-grand-mother’s place of origin as Old Country. That is what I called it as well, until my grandmother corrected me and said that it sounds uneducated.
rokies – the overlooks; a headache and possibly cold sweats caused by an evil eye.
When you wear that splashy suit, you better wear your gotchies inside-out so you don’t get the rokies.
spudadnovatch – to snoop; go through someone else’s personal belongings, often done by a curious small child.
Statia spudadnovatches in her neighbors’ bathroom medicine cabinets to see what kind of pills they take.
stada baba – old lady
On the way to work, I was stuck behind some stada baba who was driving about 10 miles an hour.
tetha – aunt
My mother used to walk up Shannon Hill (in Simpson, PA) to her tetha’s house to watch Kukla, Fran and Ollie on her black and white television set. Tetha was the only one in the neighborhood with a TV.
Note: At the time, there were no licensed UHF channels. They only received one channel, WNBF Channel 12 from Binghamton, NY.
yanko – an uneducated person; someone having the appearance of a newly arrived immigrant
The father told his young son, "Comb your hair and button your shirt the right way, you look like a yanko."
zhedowzo – a sloppy person
Lucy’s date had ripped jeans and rotten teeth. He looked like a zhedowzo.
zheedo – grandfather, or great grandfather variations: gido, dido
Zheedo worked in the mines.
zoga – a trouble maker, or instigator; verb form: zogatch to instigate, to egg on; zogatcher an instigator
Stanley always gets into trouble when Chester is around because Chester is a zogatcher.
Miscellaneous:
My grandmother used to say that I was a “little fedsick”. She used to call my niece a spudadnitsa when she was spudadnovatching, and other times she called her a slydoolia.
Incidentally, this is an updated version of a page that I had posted over twenty years ago on the now defunct free web hosting sites, Xoom and Geocities.
My beer website lager57.weebly.com/
Follow me on Facebook www.facebook.com/strippens
The Old School thebp.site/57084