Float like a butterfly, shmitz like a bulvan
So let’s say you’re watching a mixed-martial arts match and need to explain to your Yiddish-speaking friend what’s going on. Rutgers University prof Eddy Portnoy provides a glossary of “Yiddish terms for specific ass-kicking techniques.”
Writing for the on-line Jewish magazine Shtetl, Portnoy, a professor of Yiddish, provides a list of fight terms found in a 1926 essay by a little-known scholar named Hershl Grinboim. “Even in 1867,” writes Portnoy, “dozens of Yiddish words and phrases existed that dealt with fighting.”
A sample:
Unterkletzl: also Puterpletzl and Benkele: a strong knee in the ass.
Araynforn: as in, “araynforn in pisk arayn,” meaning, to elbow someone in the jaw.
Barne: a closed-fisted hit on the head with the knuckle of the middle finger raised. Known in English as a noogie.
Bukh: a punch in the side.
A bintl finger: literally, “a bundle of fingers.” a punch in the mouth. Not to be confused with the Forverts’ A bintl brif (A Bundle of Letters) column.
A bentsh: to smash someone in the head with a piece of wood, or some other item. Literally, “a blessing.”
Der gubernator: “the governer.“ To take one’s thumb and jab it under a person’s ribcage, or into his side.
If this turns out to be a Purim parody, I’m going to give Portnoy such a bukh!
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JustASC is written by Andrew Silow-Carroll, Editor-in-Chief of the 
April 18th, 2011 at 10:16 pm
I was looking for a definition for bulvan and found your blog. Your little essay on MMA fighting was hilarious! It was even more entertaining when I sent your essay to my son, Jesse Cohen, a mixed martial arts fighter (and a fire fighter) here in Colorado.
Jess is a typical young person from a family of mostly Jewish heritage, what with university degrees in economics/business and communication. Of course he veered away from that direction and became a strength coach for athletes after taking a minor in exercise physiology.
So, the only Cohen in Colorado mixed martial arts and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu will read this and execute a Unterkletzl and Araynforn in his next match. He may even do a klopf in the kopf.
Ron