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Sheeny

Drop that Word

Dear Word Detective: The spelling may be incorrect, but the term is pronounced “sheeny man.” I believe it refers to a person who buys and sells junk; a rag and bone man. I am interested to know the derivation of this term and its correct spelling. — Mary Mulhern.

I must say that your question took me slightly aback, and before I answer it, I’ll explain why. It reminded me of a day I remember quite clearly, although I was only about 11 or 12 years old at the time. I came marching into my parents’ living room that afternoon, absentmindedly singing a little jingle I’d picked up somewhere, probably at school, as children often do. I was utterly unprepared for my mother’s shocked reaction to my little song, but after she explained that one of the words in the jingle (it was “jigaboo”) was a virulent slur against Black people, I was appropriately shocked myself.

So I am certain that you are as innocent in asking your question as I was in repeating that little jingle, which means that “sheeny” survives somewhere as acceptable conversational vocabulary, which is depressing, to put it mildly. “Sheeny” is a very old and extremely derogatory term for a Jewish person. It first appeared in the 19th century and its origin is uncertain, but it may be based on the German word “schon,” meaning “beautiful.” The theory is that Yiddish-speaking Jewish merchants pronounced “schon” as “sheen” when advertising their wares, and the word was then picked up as slang for Jews in general. While “sheeny” was at first not especially negative in connotation (and was used by Jews themselves in a joking sense in the mid-19th century), in the 20th century it has become an unambiguously anti-Semitic slur, on a par with “kike.”

91 comments to Sheeny

  • Don Ballantyne

    Actually, the origin goes back to the fifth book of Moses: Deu 28:37 And thou shalt become an astonishment 8047, a proverb 4912, and a BYWORD 8148, among all nations 5971 whither the LORD 3068 shall lead 5090 thee. Byword is translated “sheeny”.

    It was a prophetic verse telling the Israelites that they would be called Sheenies in the days to come, a slang for the Hebrew shen·?·nä’ and certainly used in a a derogatory sense. It has always been used negatively outside Jewish culture just as the n-word has been used in a negative sense toward black people.

  • Judy

    I believe Mary is refering to the garbage pickers who pulled their wagons through the streets of Detroit back in the 1960’s and 1970’s. I don’t think she meant it in a derogatory way.

    • Phyllis

      My husband and I grew up in Detroit in the 1940’s and remember the sheeny man with a wagon and horse coming through the alleys picking up rags and junk. We didn’t know it had anything to do with Jews as we did not know or live near any Jews or Negroes back then

  • Having just seen Don’s comment, above, and being a native Hebrew speaker (and having studies some Hebrew and Semitic linguistics as well), I feel the need to add a correction here. The word ‘Shenina’ is not ‘Sheeny’ and does not refer to a derogatory term – it basically means ‘scorn, mockery, taunt’ (from the root SH-N-N, same root as ‘tooth’, which can relate either to the word either in the sense of something sharp and cutting, or in the sense of something that is repeated often, ‘chewed over’, in the same way that the verb for ‘memorise by heart’ comes from the same root). It works well with the rest of the verse: the meaning is that ‘you’ (the people spoken to in the verse) shall become a proverbial fool, something that people of the future will make fun of for generations.
    Any etymological connection between this verse and the term ‘sheeny’ seems incredibly far-fetched to me, unless you can find actual proof that this really is the source.

    • Lynn

      So are we insulting Jewish people by speaking of the rag and bone man as a sheeny man? I want to remove this word from my vocabulary if I aam wrong in saying this

  • Ally

    I agree with “Judy” (especially since she used the definition herself) meant only the old term for a person who deals in junk. This person usually hauled a wagon down the streets collecting “junk”. This junk could be truly junk or perhaps someone along the way would want to buy it. I believe the time would have been closer to the 40’s or 50’s, however.
    Although I have lived in Detroit, I first heard the term as a child on Ohio. Parents would sometimes threaten badly behaved children with ” giving them to the sheeny”, meaning the junk man.
    I am not sure, but possibly some junk men were Jewish, thus the term evolving into an ethnic slur. Or, perhaps it was an ethnic slur in the first place, not necessarily understood by children.

  • Ally

    Correction: my above comment should have read: after the parenthesis “that Mary meant..,
    Please correct or forgive misleading typo.

  • Lynn

    The Sheeny man was the rag and bone collector for my family. If he was Jewish we sure didn’t know. He mended pots and pans and recycled things. Sure there was the threat if you were not well behaved you would be sold to the sheeny man. The Sheeny man provided an essential service in the Great Depression. I am sad that it meant something bad. If I had not looked this up I would have had no idea I was saying something wrong. For us he was part of the neighborhood like the grocer or the milkman.
    How sad.

  • Maryk

    Perhaps the Midwest – including Detroit – is the source for this term. Sheeny man, milkman postman egg man. All were visitors to the old neighborhood.

  • sarah

    language evolves and if the intent was not derogatory don’t feel bad nor delete it from your vocabulary repurposing is fashionable and apparently always has been

  • grace

    I also grew up in Detroit in the 50’s – 70’s. My parents grew up there also from the 20’s. My parents used ragman and sheenyman interchangeably. I never heard a derogatory connotation associated with it.And believe me, my dad was a product of his time and he expressed ethnic slurs freely.

  • In the 1930s the sheenie came by in the late spring and early fall (I was away at the cottage for July and August) Our sheenie had an open cart pulled by an emaciated horse that I always felt sad for. I don’t remember whether he wore anything on his head. he looked old with a thin scraggly beard. This was in a middle class neighbourhood in Toronto. Our sheenie was only after scrap metal. I learned that he was Jewish but this term only applied to the guy in the cart who had a small whip for the horse. I remember asking my mother how do you tell someone is a Jew. The reply was unsatisfactory. This was in the years when Kristal Nacht occurred but I never learned about it till in University

  • Linda

    I first heard the term 30 years ago when my then mom-in-law compared my well dressed daughters to their cousins who were “dressed as little sheenies”. I had no idea where it came from but knew she meant is badly. FYI that was in Illinois. One of my daughters is now raising her 3 sons who are Jewish like their father. I’m glad I read this as I didn’t understand the racial slur.

  • Shaun Taylor

    We had both a Sheeny Man and a milk man who used horse drawn carts. We would feed the milk man horses Nabisco shredded wheat. Sheeny was never used in a derogatory way. Though, he used to scare the hell out of us. I’d go running into the house when he was a block away. He had a horn that he blew and tattered clothes and a beard. The whole look wasn’t far off of Dracula in the old movies. This was in the late 1940’s, early 50’s in Detroit. My paarents were post WW1 German and didn’t tollerate race descrimination of any kind. To this day I can’t use the term Jewish Rye for bread without feeling like it is inappropriate.

    • Maureen

      Your description is exactly as I remember the Sheeny Man. I wonder if they all looked like this, or did we know the same man? I never thought of this term as derogatory, that’s just what he was called. Interestingly, our west side Detroit neighborhood was mixed with Jewish, black, white, Italian, etc., and my mother was friendly with everyone. Curious that I never heard anyone object to the name Sheeny Man.

  • Patricia

    I remember when the Sheenie Man came through our neighborhood in the late 40’s, early 50’s in Ann Arbor, MI. He had a partially open tall cart with a covered roof, drawn by a very weary looking horse. If I remember correctly, he bought and sold old metal pots and pans, and he also sharpened (and sold?) knives. He dressed in rags and had shaggy salt and pepper hair, and (at my young age) I thought he was ancient. My grandmother regularly threatened she was going to “sell you to the Sheenie,” so I never got very close to him out of fear. She had such disgust in her voice when she said it that I’ve always avoided using the term because it felt so derogatory.

    It’s really interesting and enlightening to read all these comments!

  • Julie Matuszak

    My mother used to threaten us with the Sheeny Man, but we never new what it meant. Years later my mother went to visit her son and grandchildren in California. The grandchildren were carrying a big poster with “Grandma did you bring the Sheeny Man” right thru LAX….

  • Ross

    Sheeny as a slur for Jew originated in 19th century London. Definitely not the Midwest.

  • gail

    My mother used to tell me that one of her bigoted neighbors used to yell “beware of the sheenies” out the window to her kids every time the Jewish kids went out to play. It was in the 1920’s in Scranton, Pa. It was most definitely a derogatory term for Jews. According to my mother, the term originally may have simply meant ragman, most of whom were poor Jewish immigrants, but by the 1920’s in the U.S. it had evolved into an ethnic slur and was primarily intended as such. You may not have known that as a child, but your parents surely did. Sorry to have to tell you that.

  • stevie

    Enlightening to find this site and reading all the posts. I too, wasn’t sure what sheeny meant, where it came from or how to spell it. It was used by a comical story telling man who used it in a string of adjectives to describe one of the characters in his story, of which he had some business dealings with. That sheeny ass, mf, was the way I heard it and somehow I interpreted that it may be a way of saying the character was cheap or possibly, the character buffed his ass to shine, like some bird preening. Regardless,that is why I was happy to find this site discussing this word. Not afraid of words, but dislike the hate. The story teller bastardized many words, it was how they spoke in that area. I never sensed any hate in his story.

  • william

    I LIVED IN DETROIT IN THE 40S/EARLY 50S..THE SHEENY MAN WAS A BLACK MAN AS DESCRIBED WITH OLD HORSE ON THE EAST SIDE OF TOWN..WE ALSO HAD THE BOOGI MAN..

  • Ellen Bishop

    My mother who wad not born in MI but her mother was,my mother told the story of the Sheeney and the threat of selling children to him she know it had to do with him being Jewish, her mother was from Lennawee County MI I think it must go back well beyond the 1930 and even the 1920’s in that part of the world, and maybe even originated in New York which is where the family lived before Michigan.

  • Richard Katz

    My father said it was from the alphabet letter sheen!

  • Jim

    I grew up in Detroit in the 50’s and 60’s (east side) and the Sheeny was anyone who traveled the alleys picking up junk. Race or ethnicity or religion was not the issue.

  • It’s remarkable how many parents, in the midwest it seems, have threatened children with the “sheeny”. I recall mother saying “if you don’t behave, we’ll give you to the sheeny” in the 1940’s in Minneapolis. He came through the ally in a horse and wagon collecting whatever, also referred to as the ragpicker and/or junkman.

  • Bradley

    I was born in Windsor (across the river from Detroit) in 1960. As Jim stated, neither race, ethnicity nor religion was the issue. I mistakenly equated the word “sheeny” with “junk”. The “sheeny man” was the “junk man” who would drive down the alley in an old pick up truck and lean out the window and blow a horn to let you know he was coming. The “sheeny man” was never used as a threat by my parents. Speaking to a Jewish colleague in the 80s I happened to use the word “sheeny”. I must have been relating the story about the guy who drove down the alley as that was the only context that I knew. My colleague very pointedly said that I should never use that expression again but didn’t explain why. Last night I put some garbage at the curb for pickup and my wife used the expression term “sheeny man”. I guarantee that she does not realize that the expression has its origins in a pejorative.

    • Greg Atkin

      I was born in Windsor in 1956 and the sheenyman came thru our alleys once a month or sow with his horse-drawn wagon. The horse would defecate all over our alley which doubled as a diamond in the summer and a rink in the winter.

    • George Taylor

      Also lived in Windsor, late 50s early 60s. Same experience – the sheeny man was just the guy with a horse and cart who drove through the alley, blew his horn, and collected scrap metal. Never knew the term “sheeny man” was derogatory. Surely my parents heard us use this term, or used it themselves. If it was derogatory to them they certainly would have forbidden its use, as they were very correct about such things, and raised us to be as well.

  • Richard G. Burns, M.D.

    My friend Linda’s father was named Buel Fernando, not too bad but half a mouthful at least. To friends, family and friends of family he was called Sheeny. The family said it meant jew and was derogatory when applied to a random man, not Buel Fernando.Excellent coverage of the type of word that needs to be covered; the article my help prevent unintended slurs by the uninitiated. RGB, King

  • I grew up not knowing anti-anything in a very tolerant neighbourhood. The only people we hated were Nazis for we were still at war, though I don’t think we hated them (or the Japanese) as much as they were just the enemy. The German and Italian families that lived on my street were neighbours and were not to be confused with those people on the other side of the world we were fighting. We even had a couple of gentlemen that lived together, but that was okay because they were ‘brothers’ and that is how they were referred to even though they didn’t look the least bit alike. We had Catholics and Protestants among the Green and Orange Irish and, just two doors away from my parents’ house, there were three young women who didn’t seem to have jobs but no one seemed to worry about any of it. And so my first encounter with hatred came as quite a shock. We had bread and milk deliveries by horse and wagon and the rag-and-bone men shouted out something that sounded like, ‘Auuuu-dic Bone’ that I never actually understood. However, I never understood the occasional farmer who plied our street calling out, “riiii-pe berr-ies’ either. We called the rag-and-bone men, “sheeney men” amongst my contemporaries. I always thought that had something to do with American Indians because I had a book on Indians and one tribe was called Cheyenne. I learned to read when I was four (because my brother got tired of reading cartoons to me) and when I sounded out the word, I got “She” from the first syllable and “ennee” from the second, hence Sheeney. I couldn’t figure out the connection and it was at least several more years before I learned the actual pronunciation of, Cheyenne. These Sheeney men were all very sad and seemingly ancient men who were as emaciated as the poor horses they drove. They all wore either army great coats or long black overcoats and they looked as if they never had a haircut under the black wide-brimmed hats adorning their heads. They looked untidy but, from the hindsight of adulthood, that may have been because of the prayer shawls most of them wore. Whenever one of these rag-and-bone men passed by, we children took delight in running alongside, holding up three fingers as we ran. One afternoon, at the bottom of my street as we were heading home from kindergarten, a rag-and-bone man passed us in his horse and wagon. There were several of us and so we delightedly ran after him holding up three fingers while he, as usual, ignored us. He was soon enough well past us and my delight turned to curiosity. “What does holding up three fingers mean”, I asked. I was told by the biggest kid as he counted out each finger that it meant, “Jews killed Jesus”. I cannot express the various emotions and revulsion that washed through and over me. I can still feel it. I can still feel the warmth of the afternoon and the heat reflecting from the pavement and the terribly cold feeling that was residing in my gut. Christian celebrations were a big thing in those days and so the story of the nativity and the crucifixion were well known to me. I had never heard anything as stupid as ‘Jews killed Jesus’. Jesus was a Jew, I protested, and it was the Romans that killed him. I never had known shame before that moment and I wanted to run after that poor man and apologise to him. I would not have caught him anyway but, from memory, I never played with those kids again and I never made gestures to anyone from that point on. I have never understood hatred and I particularly do not understand anti-Semitism. Perhaps being Jewish is different than being of the Jewish faith, I wouldn’t know, but since the Christian god, Jehovah, and Yahweh, the god of the Jews, are one and the same (for that matter so is Allah of the followers of Islam) I fail to see what the argument is. Anyway, I will never understand hatred and I will never forget that warm mid-week afternoon when I was five.

    • Jackie

      Wow, David! That is a great account! I hope journalism is somewhere in your life/career! I so enjoyed reading your description of a very important moment in your childhood! I can feel your emotion as you said “the terrible cold feeling residing in my gut”
      I grew up on the east side of Detroit in the ‘50’s, and had all the same ethnic diversity in our neighborhood which you described. Never was there any animosity for a a different nationality or social standing. The wealthy French woman in the big brick house who made fresh croissants every Saturday morning was treated with the same respect an the family with 10 kids who lived in a tiny sort of “run down” house. Looking back, to say we were middle class was sort of stretching the word middle. We were pretty poor actually, but just didn’t know it!
      Anyway, my sheeney man experience sometimes haunts me to this day because my family was always nice to the man. My dad said he was just a man trying to make a living, and would bring stuff home sometimes he thought the sheeney could use to sell. One time he saved a bunch of old tin roofing for him, and the next time the sheeney came he gave my Dad a big old metal watering can cuz he knew my Dad liked gardening.(we used to even plant flowers in the
      alley). I have that watering can to this day! Anyway, one day my Mom was making lunch and I asked her if I could give a sandwich to the sheeney man when he got to our house, I don’t think she was crazy about the idea and came out with me to give him the P&J. He said no thank you, he didn’t need it but would it be o.k. If we could give something to his horse? So we fed the horse some vegetables. At the time there were a bunch of kids playing in the empty lot on the other side of the alley, so it must have been a Saturday) when they saw me feeding the horse I guess it was fodder for ridicule. When I got to school the next time, the kids were making fun of me for being friends with the sheeney man, saying rude things and calling him a dirty N word. I can honestly say I had that horrible cold feeling in my gut. I couldn’t understand how and why they could be so cruel. Actually, their ire was aimed at me, but I felt bad for the man. I, too, think that was the first time I saw and felt hatred. I don’t remember telling my parents about it, and I think I kept away from sheeney man because of it-which is a shame because shortly after that he stopped coming and I never saw him again. But I have that watering can to remind me of what can become of treating people fairly and not with disdain and hate!

  • John Zoch

    I am nearing 85 years. I knew the shinny of my time but never knew the derrivitory of the word until now. I grew up knowing our shinny when I learned to walk. We kids would be calling out the window whwn we saw him coming. Were we outside we would follow his wagon as far as we allowed to go. He always had a gang of kids behind him. Thanks for the memories.

  • M Lou

    I was born in 1951 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. I remember the ‘sheeny’ riding through the alleys looking for rags and scrap metals. There was also a huckster who sold fruits and vegetables.

  • I recall our Sheeny, and old black man who drove his horse cart through the alleys of Detroit but in the 40’s. As this was as close as a kid got to horses in Detroit his work fascinated me and I befriended him. He let me “drive” the horse as he picked through rubbish. On day, home alone I sold him rugs from my Aunt’s floors for a few quarters. It took the rest of the day to find and recover them. Still one of my best memories from city living.

  • Back in the early 50s in Shamokin, PA the sheeny man would ride thru our street in his horse drawn wagon crying out “shee-eeny mannn, shee-eeny mannn” to let us know he was there. I can’t imagine that he would use a word on himself that was considered derogatory. I was 5 at the time.

  • Betty Brodkin

    The actor Kirk Douglas (Issur Davidovich-sp.) wrote a book about himself and his father, who was a “rag man.” I did not know the derivation of the word “sheenie;” hence, my reading this website. I had heard the word from my father when I was little, but I never knew the meaning, nor did I ever ask. I am appalled by any ethnic and racial slurs of any kind. People who do not know the meanings of words use many ethnic slurs, and I see and hear it more and more on radio and TV. Wake up, people, this is what starts racial and ethnic tensions!!!

  • Bea

    I believe Kirk Douglas’ last name was Danielovich, not Davidovich. I have not read his book, so I do not know whether he was proud of his father for what he did, just to keep food on the table. I will have to read his book.

  • lea

    I grew up in northeast PA in the 70’s (near Scranton), and the sheeny was the old guy in the even older truck that pulled a huge wagon and collected metal and other junk from the sidewalks every couple of weeks. Period. The neighborhood knew when he was coming and would put out whatever they wanted to get rid of for him to take away. He was a nice enough man, waved to people that were out (and they waved back). Never was there any ethnic slur attached. In fact, we were in a mostly Eastern European neighborhood and I always thought the word sheeny must be Hungarian or Slovak, or something along that order. Never did any Jewish reference come up.

  • El etyinger

    I am old, 87 years old. I recall the strawberry man, the cantaloupe man and the Sheeney, who collected or bought whatever neighbors wanted to be shed of. Somehow I knew to never use that word, Sheeney, any other time. Somehow it did not feel right, and I was only 6 or 7 at the time.

  • Tom

    I was just researching this word and came across this website. I also remember it being used to describe recyclers (junk men) who drove horse-drawn wagons through the alleys of St. Paul Minnesota when I was a child, collecting discarded items including rags. (They would call out “raaags” (no typo) as they rode through the alleys.) Presumably, the rags were sold to paper companies, who used cloth fibers in the production of high-quality paper ( % rag constant was printed on the packages). I am not surprised to here that it was a derogatory term for Jews, as my grandparents emigrated from Poland and had a low opinion of Jews that they brought with them. So the use of the term appears to have been widespread. As far as I know, it’s use in St. Paul died out with the disappearance of the horse drawn junk wagons.

    • Tom Warling

      Tom, as I was reading your post I was thinking “Did I write this?” We must have known the same rag man (I have seen Sheeny but we used the word Shinny). I lived in Lowetown on 7th and Wacouta. How about you?

  • Maureen

    When we were kids (in Chicago), my mom (who grew up during the Great Depression) would tell us “you sound like a rag sheeny” whenever we were yelling or hollering. Didn’t realize it was negative, until I was around 25 years old. I was relating a story to a Jewish girl and I said…I was yelling like a rag sheeny…Well, her face was disgusted and she quickly excused herself from our conversation. I kept racking my brains, as to why she suddenly took off. Realized it was immediately after I said “rag sheeny”. Figured it had to be something derogatory and wanted to kick myself because…having come from my mother, it should have been no surprise to me.

  • J North

    Another Detroit kid here. Southwest Detroit; Delray community. (I guess this “sheeny many” thing is very much regionalism.) Many years ago, in the days of AOL, I piped in on some discussion forum, probably for Ex-Detroiters or something, with a memory of “the sheeny man” from the 1950’s. I did not expect the comments of how insensitive I was for using that hateful term.

    I had no idea it was hateful. In fact, I explained, it was definitely not ever intended that way by me or anyone I knew who used it. It was just the thing we called the guy who’d ride through our alleys collecting unwanted items, junk or otherwise. The guy wasn’t Jewish, he was black. As other have described, he blew a horn and called out “she-ee-ee-ny-man!” I don’t think he came by weekly…maybe monthly?

    I never thought about this back then, but where did this guy keep his horse?

    Although I did not live in the exact same neighborhood in the ’60’s, but I don’t think the sheeny man thing was still happening during that time.

  • Renee

    I live in Minnesota and when I was small and my mother felt I had misbehaved she threatened to sell me to the sheeny. I always wondered what it meant. I assumed it wasn’t very good.

  • Sharon Voiland

    Thanks for your article. I moved from Detroit to Phoenix in the 70s, and no one had ever heard of a sheeny man and thought that I was making it up.

  • elaine

    As Jim did, I grew up on the east side of Detroit in the 50’s/60’s. The sheeny man was the alley riding junk man that would let us know he was doing our alley by laying on his horn and yelling out “sheeny man coming”. (He usually had a beat up pickup and more often than not a partner helping out). Then if we had anything in our garage or yard that we needed to get rid of that was probably too large for the cans we could haul it out and leave it for him. He could be black, white, dark, light, it didn’t matter. Religion, origin nationality never entered the picture as far as I knew. My friends and I loved the sheeny man. We followed him and hoped to see what he had gotten. We all wanted to be the sheeny man–it looked like great fun. And it is!!! My entire life I enjoyed being a garbage picker–sheeny man–and at 61 I still am. I am a rural carrier and I consider it one of my perks–to be able to find treasure in others trash. And I have done quite well being the local sheeny girl.
    And yes my mom would occasionally tell me that if I didn’t shape up she would leave me for the sheeny man to pick up. Little did she know that that never was a scary threat to me–in fact it sounded like a pretty good deal!!
    My friends and I still talk about the sheeny man and were amazed to find out that some people didn’t have a sheeny man or even know what it was. I am amazed to find out that some people use the term in a negative way. I refuse to stop using “sheeny man” and will always correct anyone who tries to tell me it is an unfair or derogatory thing. Actually I think this world could use a lot more of us sheeny men out and about!!

  • Delta Pete

    Interesting comments to say the least. I have two recollections of the term “sheenie”. The second was when I saw the movie “The Pawnbroker” starring Rod Steiger. He delivers a powerful answer when asked by a young assistant, “So how come you people come to business so natural?” Steiger’s character, Sol Nazerman, is a Jewish Pawnbroker. At the end of his lengthy answer which goes back to Moses and wandering in the desert and ends with a system of how to make money, all was summed up with following statement: You just go on and on and on repeating this process over the centuries, over and over, and suddenly you make a grand discovery. You have a mercantile heritage! You are a merchant. You are known as a usurer, a man with secret resources, a witch, a pawnbroker, a sheenie, a makie and a k*ke!
    I had an uncle, my father’s brother, that had a way with words. He was the first person I ever heard using the term sheenie. Explained to me that it was a comment on how if you wear a pair of pants for an extended period of time the material in the seat and the knees become shiny. Made sense sort of, but then he went on to add that you see a lot of sheenies in the small businesses on the east side of Worcester MA. That area along Water St. In the 1950’s was populated by many Jewish businesses, bakeries, hardware stores, markets and fresh fruit and vegetable sellers.

  • Fred

    Wow I didn’t know that, I too was just a little boy when I heard the term used so often. Every time somebody with a vehicle came by carrying refuse/your junk they were referred to as the sheeny man. Thank you for the definition, I think they carry this political correctness a little too far.

  • Chris D.

    I called my boyfriend a sheeny when he was eyeing a light that was left by my apartment’s trash dumpster. He had never heard the word and I told him that my Mom used to use it for anyone who was picking up junk and collecting it. Our family has used it throughout our lives. It’s been great fun to read the comments of this word and I would definitely say that the word must have come from Detroit, MI. My Grandmother grew up in Detroit in the early 1900’s. I think I always thought there was some Jewish relevancy, but not as a slur or never thought of the term as scary.

  • Chris D.

    My Mom used to use the word and to me it was anyone picking up junk and who were collecting it. Her Mother grew up in Detroit, MI in the early 1900’s, so find it interesting that this is a common thread throughout the above comments. This has been an interesting read!

  • Julane

    I would not be surprised if it came from the Hebrew letter shin, the one that looks like a W. Most mezuzahs on Jewish doorposts have a shin, or shin dalet yud. It means Shomer Daltot Yisrael, or “He who watches over the doors of Israel. The acronym “Shaddai” is one of the names of G-d.

    • Paul

      Shenny always meant “Trash Picker” or “Junk Collector”, (i.e Mr. Haney on Green Acres), it was a job title, no different than saying butcher, baker, or milkman. I also grew up in Detroit and everyone in my family called my grandfather a shenny because he was always bringing home stuff he picked up off the street or in an alley. I remember him bringing home everything from the old metal 35 mm film ‘cans’ with the screw lids to a huge china cabinet that my grandmother made him smash up and burn (in an old 55 gallon drum that he always seemed to be burning behind his garage).

      Times were so different then, and as one of the other posters noted, we never used shenny as a slur, there were plenty of slurs back then, I was a “mick”…

  • iOS

    Heard the expression used in this TBS or TNT series The Alienist; describes Theodore Roosevelt’s assignment of two intellectuals to fight corruption in the police department.

  • Ken

    I’m a Jew. I was born in 1950 and grew up in Chicago–the city, not the suburbs. My Jewish mother was also born in Chicago and grew up dirt poor in the “old (immigrant) neighborhood” in the Depression. Her father–my grandfather–owned a small auto junkyard, basically one step above a “rag man”. Thus, my grandfather would have been the perfect person to call a Sheeny if all it meant was a junk man. Believe me, my mother would have slapped me across the face, washed my mouth out with soap and torn my backside to shreds with the belt if I ever used that term to refer to my grandfather. I learned from an early age that the term Sheeny was used exclusively by Gentiles to refer to Jews in the most derogatory terms they possibly could. Kike, Yid, Hebe, Hymie were all pale cousins to the term Sheeny. Sheeny has NEVER been used by Jews to refer to each other, and is the ultimate insult–and fighting word– to any Jew. For many years I never heard that term used anymore. Recently, I have heard it used in some crime dramas, and such, on TV and by some white anti-Semites on TV. It is disappointing that this ultimate slur word for a Jew is once again being used and is one more piece of evidence of the deepining divisions in American society.

  • Phyllis Dale

    Our sheeny was 1940 Minneapolis. My Mom wasn’t going to sell but rather give us to the sheeny. Also dragonflies would come in the night as we slept and sew our mouths shut if we lied or said a bad word. No wonder I’m so messed up.

  • Ruth Maginnis

    I found a book called “gems of the universe”
    It was published in the 1930’s whichb contains a song called “Solomon Levi” which has the line “poor sheeny Levi” who has a store on Hester St. This collection of “world famous songs” contains only European tunes except for the inclusion of two Hebrew songs that are very sacred songs sung at the High Holidays. There is also a decent selection of spirituals. Very interesting.

  • Barbara J. Goldberg

    I grew up in a Downriver suburb of Detroit. When we were young, in the 1940’s and ’50’s, our Mom would threaten to throw us out to the “sheenie man” when we were bad. Only after I married my Jewish Husband and became Jewish, did I learn that it was a VERY derogatory name for a Jewish man. It makes me cringe to hear or, even write the word.

  • Trish Bailey

    In my early years, my grandparents, who were Irish, used the term for an oddly dressed person, and I use it in that context still…..it’s a word used in our family for nothing derogatory, that’s for sure….just a messy person….

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