Schmaltz

Pronunciation: SHMALTS
Definition: sentimental or florid music or art; sentimentality. Also, clarified chicken or goose fat.
Example Sentence: I balled my eyes out at About Time. I’m a sucker for schmaltz.

Some Fun Thoughts:

Let me tell you, dear readers, I read a lot of depressing stuff and in my English classes in college, I had to read what pretentious people call “The Western Canon.” You know, Dante’s Inferno, Cervantes' Don Quixote, an even older guy’s Odyssey. You get the picture. I try not to be pretentious, books is books, so to speak, but I even read the New Yorker, so I think I’ve fallen fully into liberal pseudo-intellectual territory. Even on top of all of that highfalutin literature, I love schmaltz. My example sentence isn’t a lie. I watched About Time three nights ago—wept like a child. Guilty pleasure movie: The Notebook or Titanic. Guilty song: “Isn’t it Romantic” by Rodgers and Hart (if you’re gonna check out the song, listen to the Ella Fitzgerald version). I’m a walking schmaltzy tear ball. I get swept up in it. Who doesn’t love to love love?

Anyways, schmaltz came to the English lexicon in the mid-1930s. It began life with a literal and a figurative meaning (most words wait a while before being used metaphorically). The literal meaning is “the rendered fat of poultry,” a substance that is much in use in traditional Jewish cooking. The extended meaning of schmaltz was first applied to popular music of a cloying, or overly sentimental, variety. Do—do you get it? “Oh boy, this song is really rich and almost too much. Can trim some of that off… like fat… oh… wait… maybe this song is like the rendered fat of poultry.” Get it? ha ha ha.

Anyways, be a little schmaltzy today. Get flowers. Hold a boombox outside someone’s window. Show up at an airport and tell a stranger not to get on that plane because you were meant to be together. What’s the harm? You only have to live with the schmaltz for a little. Then life begins. See you tomorrow.