Word of the day, a yiddish slang word:

farpotshket

broken, because someone tried to fix it

This word doesn't just describe something that is broken, but something that is broken specifically because someone else tried to fix it, making it worse. It is used most commonly today to describe software engineering projects.

@benteh This is more of a Yinglish (Yiddish-English) word than a #Yiddish word. It shows up in "The Joys of Yiddish" but not any of my usual resources or dictionaries. The website you cite in another post doesn't exist. When I see a lot of English language resources on a Yiddish word, that usually gives me pause, as it's unlikely any of the sources actually speak Yiddish.

As for origins, "patshken" is to smear, paint poorly, or dirty. This is a Slavic root, also present in Russian as пачкать and Polish as paćkać (ala wiktionary: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%A4%D6%BC%D7%90%D6%B7%D7%98%D7%A9%D7%A7%D7%A2%D7%9F )

"Far" is an "inseparable verbal prefix serving to: a) create or emphasize transitive verbs; b) express removal, disappearance; c) express degradation, a negative effect." Hence the participle "farpatshket", written with an o in an American English accent. (See also oyspatshken and onpatshken with similar meanings.) That's all just transliteration, of course... it's written פֿאַרפּאַטשקעט in Yiddish.

פּאַטשקען - Wiktionary

@ehashman

I saw someone else posting about this word and had trouble finding how it was supposed to mean what they said it did. The best answer I can come to is, like you said, Yinglish. Like someone was trying to describe "slapping together a bad fix" and slammed together פאַרריכטן and פּאַטשקען. No idea if I am chasing ghosts on that theory though...

#yiddish

@kpopncommunism This is from the 1996 ed of "The New Joys of Yiddish" which claims a Germanic origin. I'm not sure I'm convinced, patshen and patshken are different words (and the latter already means a bad paint job, lol)

@OCRbot

@ehashman

That makes sense! No idea where the "when trying to fix it" part came from then..