Let’s Close the Case of “Shamus”

A columnist for Mosaic, which says it “takes a lively, serious, and committed approach to Jewish issues and ideas,” believes he’s found the source of a familiar synonym for “private detective”:

As we Hanukkah-candle lighters know, the candle that is used to light all the other candles but is not itself counted as one of them is called the shammash. The word denotes a servant or helper in classical Hebrew but assumed a pair of more specific meanings in the late Middle Ages—that of the auxiliary Hanukkah candle, and that of the sexton or beadle of a synagogue. In Yiddish, this became shammes, with the Hebrew accent characteristically moving from the last to the next-to-the-last syllable and the final Hebrew shin uncharacteristically changing to an “s.”

Has shammes also led another, semi-secret life in yet another language? Already in the middle of the last century, the suggestion was made that the English slang word “shamus” comes from it. Some etymologists thought this likely.

Click here to read that full essay by the Jewish-language expert who signs himself only as “Philologos.”