Chrysti the Wordsmith > Radio Scripts

In 1976, Stanford graduate John Cassidy's first attempts at juggling inspired him to create an instruction booklet to assist others in getting started with the sport's tricky maneuvers. Juggling for the Complete Klutz, was sold with a trio of bean-stuffed cloth cubes for the novice juggler to practice with. The instruction kit sold well, and was followed by another, in 1982, for complete klutzes who wanted to learn hackey sack.

Cassidy's initial Klutz products were marketed to those who considerd themselves clumsy, slow, bungling and non-athletic, since that's exactly what the word klutz means.

A term that gained currency in English in the mid-20th century, klutz comes directly from Yiddish, a language that has borrowed many words from German. The term Klotz, in German, means a block of wood, a lump, a butt, a stump. In the spirit of biting wit and sarcastic wordplay, Yiddish speakers appropriated the German term and fashioned it into klutz, a moniker reserved for someone with all the grace and charm of a chunk of wood.

Radio Script > Klutz