knish
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Webster’s New World dictionary says a knish is "a piece of thin rolled dough folded over a filling (usually potato)." You pronounce the "k" in knish.
Somewhere in a small village along the border of Russia and Poland a careworn Jewish balaboosta (an excellent and praiseworthy homemaker) created the first knishes well over a hundred years ago. She carefully filled them with grated potatoes, or sometimes buckwheat groats (kasha), both plentiful in the fields outside the door of her rural home. In the Russian-Polish dialect of the area, the word for this basic morsel was k’nysz, pronounced then, just as it is now.
Knishes came ashore in the U.S. with the great tide of European immigration around the turn of the 20th century. They were made at home until the first knish bakery opened on the lower East Side of Manhattan in 1910.
Here at h2g2 however, we've taken to using them to indicate a kiss. I believe the person to thank for that bit of inspiration is our own St. acidbath.
So thanks for asking, and have a <knish>