Lifestones
- Stoner—a wearer of and believer in lifestones
- Spacers– stoners who can’t get their separated stones to meld
- Melder—a stoner who can get his or her separated stones to join; a stoner who is able to get his/her stones to quickly and easily meld
- Mason—the high priests, the shamans, the keepers of and enforcers of a moral path
- Cutter—a supplier and splitter of stones
- Warmer (or StoneWarmer)— morally strong people are called ‘stone warmers’ because they can feel a glow, feel a warmth, from their stones against their skin
- Shiner– someone who is better attuned to the moods and intentions of those around him/her; Shiners are able to reflect the state of others; their stones begin to shine when they are sensing others, when they are sensing evil from others, or when they are sensing good intentions from others
- Keeper– A person who has never given away a lifestone and so has not led a particularly full or happy life
- Bare Neck—a non-stoner; someone who has never worn a lifestone; also barenecker
- Soul stone—the one you always keep
- Love stone—the one you give away
- Splitter, Slider—a former believer who has fallen off the Stoner path
- Suitable Pair—a couple whose love stones will meld with their partner’s soul stones
Historical glossary
- Pale of Settlement—from 1791 to 1917, territory with varying boundaries in the western region of czarist Russia within which Jews were allowed permanent residency and beyond which they were not
- Shtetl—Yiddish for ‘little town’
- Tsar (or Czar)—title of Russian emperor
- Cossacks—East Slavic speaking peoples who formed themselves into self-governing, semi-military communities, primarily from Ukraine; they fought on horseback, and were the backbone of the Tsarist armies, fighting against the Bolsheviks during the Russian civil war
- Pogrom—large, state-sponsored anti-Jewish rioting, condoned by local authorities
- Duma—a Russian legislative body
- Conscription—compulsory enrollment of persons for military service
- Yeshiva—an Orthodox Jewish college, seminary, or school
- Serf—unfree peasant, owned by a noble; serfdom abolished (mostly) in 1861
- May Laws—supposedly temporary regulations promulgated by the minister of internal affairs under Tsar Alexander III in May 1882 (but in force for over thirty years) restricting Jewish ownership of property, limiting where Jews could live, imposing quotas on Jewish attendance at schools and universities, prohibiting Jews from taking Christian names, working on Sundays, brewing or selling alcohol, and participating in local elections; the May Laws were the impetus for mass emigration
- Yarid—Yiddish for market day, or fair day
- Horband (or harband)—in women’s dress, a band of material, sometimes with imitation hair sewn to it, worn over that part of the head not already covered by a bonnet, leaving only the front of the face exposed
- Khalat–a long, close-fitting coat with a shawl collar and pockets on its sides worn by Jewish men on workdays; plural is khaltn
- Puretz—landowner, nobleman
- Black and Tan club
- Tenderloin
- Chicken Fricassee
- Pelmeni—meat dumpling
- Shashlik—skewers of lamb, beef, and chicken
- Blini—thin pancakes, usually for dessert or breakfast
- Maxixe—Brazilian tango
- Oblast—Russian name for province or state
- Taiga—swampy forest biome
- Moujik—Russian peasant
- Budenovka—pointed winter cap that was the official headgear of the Communist Party and the Red Army until the late 1930’s
- Red Sotnia—Red 100 or Red Hundred; elite troops guarding Trotsky 1918-1920
- Abwehr—from 1920 to 1945, the German military intelligence organization
- Treff (German)—meeting, rendezvous
- Hapag or HAPAG—acronym for Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft, the Hamburg-American transatlantic shipping company
Taxi Dancing Glossary
- Black and Tan– A colored and white cabaret
- Buying the groceries– Living in a clandestine relationship
- Class– Term used by Filipinos to denote the taxi-dance halls
- Fish– A man whom the girls can easily exploit for personal gain
- Fruit– An easy mark
- Hot stuff– Stolen goods
- Make– To secure a date with
- Mark– A person who is gullible and easily taken advantage of
- Monkey-chaser– A man interested in a taxi dancer or chorus girl
- Monkey shows– Burlesque shows with chorus girls
- Nickel-hopper– A taxi dancer
- On the ebony– A taxi-dance hall or taxi dancer having social contacts with men of races other than white
- Opera– Burlesque show
- Paying the rent– Living in a clandestine relationship
- Picking up– Securing an after-dance engagement with a taxi dancer
- Playing– Successfully exploiting one of the opposite sex
- Professional– A government investigator. One visiting the taxi-dance hall for ulterior purposes
- Punk– A novitiate; an uninitiated youth or young girl, usually referring to an unsophisticated taxi dancer
- Racket– A special enterprise to earn money, honestly or otherwise
- Shakedown– Enforced exaction of graft
- Taxi Dancer—Dance hall hostess who is paid by the dance
Yiddish and Yiddish slang (especially in the diamond district)
- mazl und brokhe— “good luck and a blessing”
- Brivke or parcel-paper A folded wrap of paper used to store stones
- Loupe A hand-held magnifying lens, usually with a magnification power of10
- Shlok Junk; rubbish; fake; second-rate merchandise.
- Strop A stone that won’t sell
- 2-10 A warning to keep “two eyes on 10 fingers” when serving a suspicious customer.
- Faynshmeker A “fine sniffer”; a connoisseur with expensive taste or excellent merchandise or both
- The shlepper who pays late
- The shtinker who never pays
- Metsiye A great deal; a bargain; a stone bought cheap
- Bashert “Destined”; something that is meant to be; when good fortune falls into your lap; a person’s soul mate, especially when considered as an ideal or predestined marriage partner;used to refer to one’s divinely foreordained spouse or soul mate, who is called “basherte” (female) or “basherter” (male)
- Mensch—a person of integrity and honor
- Schvartzer—a black man, not as derogatory as ‘nigger’, but still pejorative; schvartze for black woman