When the Yiddish isn't kosher

OY VEY. Will this never end? As we explained just 15 years ago in our court document ''The Dreck Motion," you mustn't say ''dreck" in polite company. Or in the newspaper.

We're talking to David Mehegan (''Words to live by," Living/Arts, Jan. 2). His otherwise noteworthy column on the upcoming books of 2006 centered on how the use of the language can illuminate and educate. Problem is, he called some of the books ''dreck." We don't mean to kvetch, but you might want to be more careful.

The biggest of the Yiddish machers, Leo Rosten himself, defined dreck in ''The Joys of Yiddish" as ''the sibilant four-letter English word for excrement."

David! Your bubba, probably overcome with tsouris, would have washed your mouth out with soap, and we are surprised your editors did not exclaim: ''It is a schande!"

In 1991, our Dreck Motion resulted in the deletion of the farshtunken word from our opponent's brief, and it got so much attention our mothers kissed our punims and forgave us for not going to medical school. We thought that would put an end to the mishegas.

We don't want to make a big tsimmes out of this, but it takes a lot of chutzpah to put a four-letter word in the paper, even if it is a five-letter word.

JONATHAN SHAPIRO and NEIL LEIFER
Boston