After making a change at quarterback (as discussed in a previous post), the Minnesota Vikings won for the first time this season, defeating the Carolina Panthers, 20-10. While a record of 1-2 is nothing to brag about, it certainly beats being 0-3.
The win also brought to mind one of my favorite slang words:
"Schneid."
This is a word that I've only heard in a sports context. It means: a losing streak. The word is typically used when the losing streak ends, and the team is said to be "off the schneid." Alternatively, a team "broke the schneid."
For example:
"The Vikings got off the schneid yesterday, winning their first game of the season."
Or,
"Joe Smith finally broke the schneid yesterday, hitting a double, after beginning the season with 11 consecutive hitless at bats."
I've always wondered where this strange word and phrase come from, and after searching a bit, here's what I found, courtesy of a neat web site named The Word Detective (www.word-detective.com):
To be "on the schneid" means to be on a losing streak, racking up a series of losing, and especially scoreless, games. "Schneid" is actually short for "schneider," a term originally used in the card game of gin, meaning to prevent an opponent from scoring any points. "Schneider" entered the vocabulary of gin from German (probably via Yiddish), where it means "tailor." Apparently the original sense was that if you were "schneidered" in gin you were "cut" (as if by a tailor) from contention in the game. "Schneider" first appeared in the literature of card-playing about 1886, but the shortened form "schneid" used in other sports is probably of fairly recent vintage.
Interesting.
I could write a lot more about yesterday's game, but I need to keep this post short.
I've got to go get some treatment for my broken schneid.
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