A Minute of Yiddish - Cookie Kibitznik Explains "Farpotchket"

Cookie Kibitznik, your favorite Jewish mother, is back. She's a tell-it-like-it-is, unfiltered, power-walking, pool-jogging, brisket-making giver of sage advice! She's here to teach you Yiddish, and you'll be plotzing from laughter!

These videos are not meant to compete with serious Yiddish language tutorials such as the new Duolingo  course or Rukhl Schaechter's Word of the Day lessons from the Forward. They focus on Yiddish words that you probably already know, but illustrate their use in hilarious ways. They are produced and acted out by a woman who reveals only her first name, Perri. In her Minute of Yiddish videos, she assumes the identity of Cookie Kibitznik, a yenta if we ever saw won.

In this episode, Cookie gives lots of examples of how to use the word farpotchket.

We previously posted Cookie's explanation of the word ongepotchket, which sounds very similar to farpotchket, but there is a difference in their usage, as explained by Phil Fleischmann in his website, boardgamegeek.com.

Farpotchket may seem similar to ongepotchket, and it is, but there's an important difference. Ongepotchket implies excessive complexity, perhaps due to poor planning, or too many attempts to "improve" something. Whereas farpotchket doesn't imply any complexity at all, just laziness or incompetence. Yes, there is a bit of overlap between the two.

A farpotchket thank-you letter suggests insincerity, while an ongepotchket thank-you letter goes into minute detail that you didn't need.

Farpotchket work is done as quickly as possible. Something ongepotchket probably took way too long.

And they can overlap by both having come about due to an attempt to fix or improve something. Something farpotchket is ruined after one such attempt. Something ongepotchket has had many such attempts, and might actually "work" in a sense after all that, but it's been made complicated and ugly in the process.

Enjoy!

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