Lenny Bruce (Gaw, think birth name Leonard Schneider; Worm, don’t hesitate to self-immerse) is my only hero. I fear I may have made this point before and at tedious length. It is very satisfying to have him adorning post 100, albeit, and as usual, in shtuck.

George: Mad (fershlugginer, etc.) was indeed influential, though I wonder how much of its ‘Yiddish’ was invented. (I have every issue on a DVD and will do some checking). Jonesing is to be desperate for something, usually narcotics (a jones is the addiction itself). You’re right about the residual role of German, which was always one of the three primary language strands; it was the western European influence – French, low German (paradoxically spoken in northern Germany and eastern Netherlands) that fell away.

BTW great pic of Lenny Bruce, someone whose Jewishness I hadn’t fully appreciated before.

You write

” the modern version, as found in Anglophone slang, is invariably that of eastern Europe”

Well, yes, but still with that German base, isn’t it? You could hardly claim to have functioning Yiddish slang with such words as schmuck, mensch, fress, and so on.

Mad Magazine & such sources had an influence in fly-over country that probably went considerably beyond Lenny Bruce’s.

And I’ll add that I’ve heard “dozens” but not “dirty dozens”, and supposed “joaning” to be “joneing” or “jonesing”.