A word or phrase or fragment to search (English, Yiddish, or transliterated Yiddish):

 whole word only

or a whole, inflected word; we'll search its stem.

Converting מע to me




A word or phrase or fragment to search (English, Yiddish, or transliterated Yiddish):

 whole word only

or a whole, inflected word; we'll search its stem.



This dictionary

This dictionary is the result of years of work as I have collected words, mostly from Yiddish literature. My original purpose was to automate spell-checking; it quickly became a source of definitions and occasionally etymology. All the work (and all the errors) are my own. If you find a mistake, please mail me. You can refer to this dictionary simply as "Refoyl's Online Yiddish Dictionary".

Related software

You might prefer to use the gloss displayer, which lets you enter an entire text (in Yiddish letters) and see definitions of all the words at one go, or the Yiddish spellchecker.

Searchable strings

You can search for information by Yiddish word (in YIVO transcription or in Yiddish letters), English translation, Hebrew spelling of a loshn-koydesh word, and for some grammatical and usage markers.

Yiddish words in Yiddish letters

You may use ligatures or not, and if you leave out nekudes, the program will try to fill them in. Use only the stem of the word (not the plural, case-marked, or conjugated form) of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Examples: type פּלימעניק, not פּלימעניקעס; type שײן, not שײנע, and העלף, not העלפֿן or אונטערגעהאָלפֿן.

Yiddish words in YIVO transcription

Write Yiddish words in YIVO transcription. Use the stem of the word (not the plural, case-marked, or conjugated form) of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Examples: say plimenik, not plimenikes, sheyn, not sheyne, helf, not helfn or untergeholfn.

YIVO transcription form uses the following consonants:

b g d h v z kh t y l m n s f p ts k r sh tsh zh dj
and the following vowels:
a e i o u oy ay ey
The following sentence is correctly transliterated.
ikh bin gekumen azoy vayt tsu shraybn a bisl mame-loshn!
Do not use German phonetic spelling. For instance, don't write schpiel to mean shpil.

Loshn-koydesh derived words

Use capital letters for the first letters of Hebrew proper names (like Refoyl and Binyomen). Don't use capital letters for any other Yiddish words.

If you need a loshn-koydesh derived word, first spell it phonetically. Unaccented vowels often should be spelled with an e, as in borekh, bimkem, and maskem.

If you don't know or can't guess the pronunciation, you may use the following letters to spell out loshn-koydesh.

alephא#
veysבֿB
vovוw
khesחH
yudיy
kofכּK
khofכx
ayinעe
tsadiצc
shinשS
sinשׂQ
sofתT
tofתּW

Don't distinguish final khof, mem, nun, fe, tsadi.

Examples: type msKym for מסכּים, Slwm for שלום.

In my data file, I surround all loshn-koydesh with {braces}, so you can use them, too. For instance, ym} searches for all loshn-koydesh words ending in yud-mem (ים).

Searching by other information

I record a few categories along with definitions. So type clothing or sound and you will get lists of clothing words and sound words. I also note a few grammatical items (try indeclinable) and usage (try inadmissable or German).

On occasion I indicate where I saw a word, especially if I don't see the same word in standard dictionaries; try Forwards, Hoffman, Bergelson, note: V.

Nonstandard spellings

I have used standard YIVO Romanization and orthography in this dictionary. If you are trying to find a word that uses other schemes (see the Wikipedia article for some insight), consider making these adjustments.

  1. Don't use the prefix be-; use ba-.
  2. Don't use the prefix er-; use der-.
  3. Don't use the inseparable verb prefix tsu-; use tse-.
  4. Don't place an h after a vowel to lengthen it; write ey instead of eh, for instance.
  5. If the text doesn't distinguish a tsvey-yudn (ײ) from pasekh-tsvey-yudn (ײַ), try both ay and ey.
  6. Similarly, if the text doesn't distinguish pe (פּ) from fe (פֿ), try both p and f.
  7. If the text has a word starting with alef-yud (such as אינגל), also search for it with yi, as in yingl.
  8. If the text has a word ending in -ig, try -ik.
  9. The epenthetic ayin before a nun en (ענ) is sometimes absent in modern spelling, leaving just the nun.
  10. If the text has a double consonant, such as tt, search with a single consonant, such as t.
  11. If the text has an alef with a segol (אֶ), try e.
  12. Transliterate the khes (ח) as kh. Some books use the khes where standard orthography uses the khof (כ).
  13. If your text has a final khof with a dagesh (ךּ), just ignore the dagesh and use kh.