shtick

English

Alternative forms

• schtick, schtik, shtik

Etymology

Borrowed from Yiddish שטיק (shtik, “shtick, act, piece”). Cognate with German Stück, Dutch stuk. Doublet of shtuka and steck.

Pronunciation

• (General American, Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ʃtɪk/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪk

Noun

shtick (plural shticks)

1. A generally humorous routine.
   • 1974, Julian Barry, Lenny:

     Sally Marr: Lenny [Bruce] used to do a shtick between strippers. / The Interviewer: What kind of stick? / Sally Marr: No, it's shtick, darling, shtick.

   • 1991, Douglas Coupland, “Celebrities Die”, in Generation X, New York: St. Martin's Press, →OCLC, page 111:

     Dag and I are drying glasses, a strangely restful activity, and we're listening to Mr. M. do his Mr. M. shtick. We feed him lines; it's like watching a Bob Hope TV special but with home viewer participation.

   • 1995, Rik, quotee, MacUser, volume 11, MacUser Publications, page 147:

     But even great shtick can get old real fast: the dreaded Saturday Night Live syndrome.

   • 1997, David Foster Wallace, “David Lynch keeps his head”, in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Kindle edition, Little, Brown Book Group:

     By its thirtieth episode, the show had degenerated into tics and shticks and mannerisms and red herrings, and part of the explanation for this was that [David] Lynch was trying to divert our attention from the fact that he really had no idea how to wrap the central murder case up.

   • 2009 June 8, Campbell Robertson, “In Iraq, Colbert Does His Shtick for the Troops”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     The troops didn’t seem to care much about the meta-ness of Mr. [Steven] Colbert’s visit, nor were they uneasy about his political shtick as they laughed at the gags about clearing Iraq of weapons of mass destruction […]

2. A characteristic trait or theme, especially in the way people or media present themselves.
   • 1973, Barry White (lyrics and music), “Never, Never Gonna Give Ya Up”:

     I'm never ever gonna quit 'cause / Quittin' just ain't my shtick

   • 2001 April 22, William Safire, “Shtick”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     Like you, I have stumbled through life without knowing what an umlaut signifies and looked it up today only because language is my shtick.

   • 2012 August 21, Jason Heller, “The Darkness: Hot Cakes (Music Review)”, in The Onion AV Club‎:

     Self-mythology has always been part of The Darkness’ shtick, but here Hawkins and crew forget to back it up with music catchy enough to transcend the solipsism.

   • 2014 January 21, Hermione Hoby, “Julia Roberts interview for August: Osage County – 'I might actually go to hell for this…'”, in The Daily Telegraph (Review)‎, archived from the original on 2018-02-01:

     […] however hard she pushed the tough-talkin’ shtick, she remained doe-eyed, glowing and somehow unassailably demure.

   • 2016 April 7, Sabrina Siddiqui, “Ted Cruz: Republicans' only love, sprung from their refocused hate”, in The Guardian‎:

     Whether [Ted] Cruz can, in fact, build the relationships he would need within the halls of the Capitol if he is to be the nominee – and whether doing so would undermine his anti-Washington shtick – remains an open-ended question.

   • 2017 October 4, Jonathan Freedland, “Boorish Boris: Johnson’s Libya joke is proof he cannot do his job”, in The Guardian‎:

     Why, [Jacob Rees-]Mogg even offers the same shtick: Etonian accent, Latin tags, supposedly lovable Wodehousian eccentricity, sub-Churchillian evocation of the glorious past of this island race.

   • 2023 October 20, Marina Hyde, “Rishi Sunak, decorated hero of the war on motorists, is no match for a real-world conflict”, in The Guardian‎, UK:

     Johnson’s approach to that deadly crisis was to only lightly repurpose his shtick into the equivalent of “Get Covid done”

3. A gimmick.

Translations

Further reading

• shtick on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• kitsch, schtik, skitch, thicks