Dear Word Detective: So okay, I lived a few years in Philly, I’ve moved on. But I always called what is otherwise a “big shot” a “big mahoff.” My grown daughter tried to research this when she got blank stares after using it around friends, and it seems to be a totally local expression. I tried to verify this tonight (rather than going back to work), and she seems to be right. Most of the citations are by Philadelphians, about Philadelphians or in Philadelphia publications. Whaddayathink, is this really just a Philadelphianism? — Diane Yaghoobian.
Could be. Maybe it refers to the guy who invented the cheesesteak, a.k.a. the Coronary Event on a Bun.
There must be something going on in Pennsylvania. The two largest cities, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, are both famous in linguistics circles for their idiosyncratic slang, terms often heard nowhere else on the planet. Natives of Pittsburgh, for instance, apparently call baloney sandwich meat “jumbo.” Put that baloney on a long roll with lettuce, tomato, etc., and you have what much of the rest of the US calls a “submarine sandwich” (or just a “sub”), but is known in Philadelphia (and southern New Jersey, to be fair) as a “hoagie.” Philadelphians also apparently call the sidewalk “the pavement.” Can you say “lost colony of space aliens”? I knew you could.
Now that I’ve ensured myself lots of mail from hoagieland, on to “mahoff.” As you’ve discovered, this is evidently a seriously obscure term outside of Philadelphia. It’s not defined in any major dictionary, it’s not listed in the Historical Dictionary of American Slang (HDAS), and it’s not even in the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), the gold standard of glossaries of weird local terms. Fortunately, Grant Barrett, a lexicographer at Oxford University Press, project editor of HDAS and proprietor of the Double-Tongued Word Wrester Dictionary website (www.doubletongued.org) did a write-up on “mahoff” in January 2005. He found print citations dating back to 1951, all using “mahoff” or “big mahoff” in the sense of “big cheese” or “important person.” Grant later contributed to a discussion of “mahoff” at Dave Wilton’s wordorigins.org site in which various origins from Irish to Russian were discussed, but no conclusion was reached. So, for the moment at least, “mahoff” remains a mystery.
I heard something like this as a kid, only it was “big mehab”. I think it comes from “mahiip” which is, I believe, the word for “king” in one or another Hindu dialect. Maybe in Kipling?
What’s wrong with “pavement” for sidewalk? it’s been in common British usage for decades.
I have been searching for the origin of the big mahoff for ages to no avail.
Every Philadelphia native knows it, but few outside the city do.
As a city known for political and group braggadocio (whether valid or not), having its own term for a person that epitomizes his representation makes perfect sense.
It has a wonderful air about it, much better than big shot or top dog. Of course, I may be biased…
Lived in Philly all my life till moving to South Carolina to teach at a small college. Big Mahoff is a Philly term all the way…Real Philly cheesesteaks do not chop up the meat and cheese into an unrecognizable heap of goo- the meat stays in one piece- and we never go “to the beach” we go “Down the Shore.”
Id like to know what thats all about. My last name is Mahoff.
OMG…this word is not known around the world? New to ME ! :)
from Haverford, PA (you know, just outside PH)
so then there’s “center city”.
someone thought i was tawking about an actual city named center.
go figure.
how about “youz”? for “you all” or you with someone else or just one “you”.
how about “the blue route”? an actual numbered highway!
my dad was a big mahoff: my definition?
it’s a guy or a woman who thinks they’re a ‘big shot’ but is actually a mean, mistrusted, misunderstood fool.
that’s my take on that “wacky” city of brotherly love!
I’m from the Allentown Pa area and my dad was a UAW worker at Mack trucks for many years….He usually used the term in a derogatory way….As if someone thinks they are more important than they are. Or maybe he’d just say it that way….” He thinks he’s the Big Mahoff”……I always thought it was funny and he’d laugh when I said it when I was in grade school….And pavement for sidewalk and hoagies for subs are stillthe way I think of them.
It’s mahoff in Philly for sure. My In-laws in Pittsburgh know the word as Macher…..say they both derive from German roots or maybe Yiddish! Both cases its the big cheese! And we ate a hoagie while sittin on the pavement before we left the shore to come home, we were shoobies!
Since when are hoagies made from baloney? GEEZ! Get your facts straight.
The proper pronunciation of pavement in Philly is payment. We go to the denis for our teeth, play the pieano in the pallor and say zinc for sink. We never name our boys Otto because we can say it…..comes out Oddo. And yes we never go to the beach until we are down da shore where the ‘lantic Ocean is.