>>>>It's amazing the amount of Yiddish we, even in England, speak regularly: "it's a bit of a schlepp", "he's a schmo/schlemeil", et al (forgive spelling). I love it. Many a put-down expression.
>>>
>>>Its schlemiel and schlemazel. The first one is the waiter that drops the soup on the customer's lap. The second one is the dropee.
>>
>>I looked up schlemiel and schmo this morning in the dictionary. They're both listed and both mean more or less the same: Schmuck :-)
>
>I have the feeling that my Yiddish isn't nearly as good as Alex or Tamar, but the connotations behind those words are very different.
>
>I can't think of a good english word for "schlemiel" or "schlemazel" (or "schmo" for that matter) but I think "schmuck" translates very well to "prick" in both literal and figurative senses. While the other three words all have negative implication, none of them are nearly as strong.

Sure, but I wasn't going to include all the dictionary defos. They all boil down to a derogatory term that, in English, can be summed up as "divvy" or "dick-head"