{"id":24491,"date":"2026-02-26T15:18:56","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T15:18:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=24491"},"modified":"2026-02-26T15:18:56","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T15:18:56","slug":"silly-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=24491","title":{"rendered":"Silly Madness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The word <strong>mishegoss<\/strong> came up in a book I&#8217;m reading at the moment, and I had no idea what it meant, so I thought I&#8217;d find out.<\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/55359706@N04\/5132728117\/in\/photolist-oBWcF-8Pyzfn-2pLouXX-2png3ET-9wCwsk-7Cm69-9zM6Sq-K2e8i2-dXsU4r-dXyxzu-9PSXFs-bDms5-63yaJw-4VTAC\" title=\"mishegoss\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/1188\/5132728117_32039d68b7_z.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" alt=\"mishegoss\"\/><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><strong>Mishegoss<\/strong> [\u02ccm\u026a\u0283\u0259\u02c8\u0261\u0252s \/ \u02c8m\u026a\u0283\u0259\u0261\u0252s] is apparently a slang term meaning madness or silliness. It comes from the Yiddish word <strong>\u05de\u05e9\u05d5\u05d2\u05e2\u05ea<\/strong> (meshugas), which means craziness, madness, nonsense, crazy talk, senseless activity, irrationality, craze, fad or quirk. That word comes from Yiddish <strong>\u05de\u05e9\u05d5\u05d2\u05e2<\/strong> (meshuge &#8211; crazy), from Hebrew <strong>\u05de\u05e9\u05d5\u05d2\u05e2<\/strong> (m&#8217;shug\u00e1 &#8211; mad, crazy, insane), from <strong>\u05e9\u05d9\u05d2\u05e2<\/strong> (shig\u00e9a &#8211; to drive crazy) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/mishegoss#English\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>Words from the same roots include <strong>mi\u0219egos<\/strong> (petty) in Romanian, <strong>\u043c\u0438\u0448\u0438\u0433\u0430\u0441<\/strong> [m\u02b2\u026a\u0282\u0268\u02c8\u0261as] (maddness, insanity) in Russian, <strong>\u043c\u0435\u0448\u0438\u0433\u043e\u0441<\/strong> (me\u0161yh\u00f3s &#8211; maddness) in Ukrainian, <strong>mes\u00fcge<\/strong> (crazy) in Hungarian, and <strong>meshugge<\/strong> (crazy, mad, senseless, insane) in English [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%92%D7%A2#Hebrew\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>I think I&#8217;ve heard or seen the word <strong>meshugge<\/strong> before, though I wasn&#8217;t sure what it meant at the time. Apparently it&#8217;s been used in English since at least 1880 [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/meshugge#English\">source<\/a>]. Is it mainly used in American English?<\/p>\n<p>Some related words in English include: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>mashugana<\/strong> = nonsense, silliness, craziness, garbage; a person who is silly or crazy<\/li>\n<li><strong>meshugaas<\/strong> = nonsense, rubbish, craziness, a chaotic state of affairs, a mess<\/li>\n<li><strong>meshuggener<\/strong> = crazy, insane; a madman, a crazy person, a nutter<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Do you use any of these words?<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-5001128073855040\"\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script><br \/>\n<!-- Blog horizontal --><br \/>\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\n     style=\"display:block\"\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-5001128073855040\"\n     data-ad-slot=\"1685480124\"\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins><br \/>\n<script>\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\n<\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The word mishegoss came up in a book I&#8217;m reading at the moment, and I had no idea what it meant, so I thought I&#8217;d find out. Mishegoss [\u02ccm\u026a\u0283\u0259\u02c8\u0261\u0252s \/ \u02c8m\u026a\u0283\u0259\u0261\u0252s] is apparently a slang term meaning madness or silliness. It comes from the Yiddish word \u05de\u05e9\u05d5\u05d2\u05e2\u05ea (meshugas), which means craziness, madness, nonsense, crazy talk, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,121,123,10,51,52,75,78,82],"tags":[582,158,580,138,578,577,281,583,581,163,579],"class_list":["post-24491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-hebrew","category-hungarian","category-language","category-romanian","category-russian","category-ukrainian","category-words-and-phrases","category-yiddish","tag-craziness","tag-etymology","tag-hebrew","tag-language","tag-meshugge","tag-mishegoss","tag-omniglot","tag-silliness","tag-slang","tag-words","tag-yiddish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24491"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24494,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24491\/revisions\/24494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}