Verklempt - B

B

• balabusta – a homemaker; usually applied with positive connotations
• bentch – to bless, commonly referred to saying Grace after meals (bentching)
• bissel (Yid., ביסל) – a small amount, "a pinch of" something (cf. Austrian/Bavarian bissl, a dialectal variant of the more standard German bisschen, "a little bit")
• blintz (Yid., בלינצע blintse) – a sweet cheese-filled crepe
• bris – the circumcision of a male child
• boichika – sweetheart; usually, a young boy or young man
• bubbeh, bubbe, – grandmother; pronounced like "book", not like the Southern U.S. nickname (cf. the Slavonic baba, "old woman" with different overtones in different languages)
• bubala – a term of endearment; often, a young child
• bubbameisse – Old wives' tale, cock and bull story (often attributed by erroneous folk etymology to combination of bubbe, "grandmother," and meisse, "tale", but in fact derives from "Bove-meisse," from the "Bove Bukh," the "Book of Bove", the chivalric adventures of fictitious knight Sir Bevys ("Bove") of Hampton, first published in Yiddish in 1541 and continually republished until 1910.
• bubkes (also spelled "bupkis") – emphatically nothing, as in He isn't worth bubkes (literally "goat droppings", in Polish "bobki")