shtetl
Americannoun
-
shtetlach,
plural
-
shtetls
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of shtetl
Yiddish, little town
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
“Boiled chickpeas seasoned with salt and pepper were the ultimate shtetl snack food,” she writes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 16, 2026
It’s 1905, and Anatevka isn’t the shtetl that it once was.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 15, 2025
“It really was shtetl Carlton, back then,” said Arnold Zable, 76, a writer who captured the community and area in his book “Scraps of Heaven.”
From New York Times ● Jul. 18, 2023
Not long after Jewish author Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" had launched second-wave feminism, Harnick introduced the shtetl of Anatevka and its quaint ways through a song about unequal gender roles.
From Salon ● Jul. 8, 2023
“Nicer than anything any of the girls in our shtetl or Fayge’s have. All the other girls will be jealous.”
From "The Devil's Arithmetic" by Jane Yolen
His parents, Jacob, a plasterer, and Rel Goldman Topol, a seamstress, had fled shtetlach in Eastern Europe to settle in Palestine in the early 1930s.
From New York Times ● Mar. 9, 2023
The soup, redolent of the shtetlach of Thomas' Jewish forebears, speaks for itself.
From Time Magazine Archive
Potatoes, which became popular around the mid-19th century, made their way into kugel as an inexpensive and filling starch, and eventually became popular across impoverished shtetls.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 16, 2021
What comes through most is his affection for his grandparents, both born in shtetls outside Kiev, who met in Baltimore when young Boris was on tour and Bessie was 14.
From New York Times ● Apr. 6, 2011
A recent Jerusalem Post piece details one professor's attempt to show how modern humor flows directly from the mean, aggressive, sarcastic, bleak humor practiced by "badkhn" entertainers in the Jewish shtetls of 17th-century Eastern Europe.
From Slate ● Mar. 15, 2011
Both parents had come to America before the First World War from Jewish shtetls, or small towns, outside Warsaw.
From The New Yorker ● Jan. 14, 1966
His teachings, which emphasized the immediacy of God's presence in everyday life, quickly swept through the shtetls of Eastern Europe.
From Time Magazine Archive
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
