Schtick, a brief history. (Destiny)

by Kermit , Raleigh, NC, Monday, June 29, 2015, 13:18 (3417 days ago) @ Funkmon

Shtik is Yiddish. It comes from stück, (pronounced sh, then the work took) a German word for piece.

The entry for shtik in the OED hasn't been updated since 1986, so it's dated, but it lists alternate forms as shtick and schtick. The citations appear to not favour one or the other, though modern corpus searches show the variant "shtick" to be winning. Since the word is new, basically only entering English at large in the sixties, it makes sense that the spelling hasn't yet been settled, though a direct transliteration is shtik, a largely unused variant spelling today, but the one it's in the OED as. Schtick appears to be an acknowledgment of the Germanic roots of the word, using the common letter combinations sch and ck that appear in German (a great example of hyperforeignism) whereas shtick is an entirely Anglicized version using English spelling conventions.

Kermit has been using it as a word for an act or persona put on by a person. This is a newer use for even a new word. It originally entered the English lexicon as a phrase used in comedy. Comedians have a bit, piece, gag, or shtik. Evolving from this meaning, a whole set or a whole act could become a shtik. It then evolved to be an entire character. Recently, it has been used to describe a put on personality or act by a person not in comedy, and also a behaviour for which a person is known, how it was used here.

My years spent taking German probably influenced my spelling preference.