Yenta

Yenta or Yente (Yiddish: יענטאַ‎) is a Yiddish designation for a woman who is a gossip or busybody. The female name is derived from Yentl, in turn derived from a word in Old Italian which means kind or amiable (compare gentle).

In the age of Yiddish theater, it started referring to a busybody or gossipmonger. The word has since become Yinglish (a Yiddish loanword in American Jewish English). In the 1920s Yenta was first popularized by the humorist Jacob Adler (not the actor Jacob P. Adler) writing under his pen name B. Kovner, in which he created the character Yenta, and featured Yenta in a Broadway play entitled Yenta Telebenta. Yenta was also his character in a 50-year writing career for The Jewish Daily Forward.

The name was used as the name of the matchmaker in the Broadway musical hit, Fiddler on the Roof. It was the name of an Israeli spy agency in the 1960s TV sitcom Get Smart, in an episode titled 'The Man from Yenta'.

The name has also been used for: