Perhaps this is worthy of a new thread, but for now I’m posting it here. Maybe it’s not a bad thing to go off topic for a bit…. in order to help people more intelligently communicate their opinions or thoughts!
This is a pet peeve of mine, based not in perfectionism, but in intelligent communication:
Tznius is a noun!
It is not an adjective.
To use it in a sentence:
a. Tznius is a good trait. b. One can have a discussion on proper dress, and proper behavior. That would be a discussion about Tznius. c. The topic in which we review, or teach, the Torah’s approach for proper presentation of ourselves in a way that does not attract attention is called Tznius.
A noun is a word used as the name of a person, place, thing, state, quality, activity, action etc… The word Tznius is an abstract noun. (the name given to a quality or action or state which we can understand but we can not touch and see.) Other abstract nouns are hunger, and altruism.
A person can not be Tznius, just like a person can not be hunger or altruism.
An adjective is a word that describes or modifies another word; usually a noun or another adjective. If we want to describe a person in any way, we need to use an adjective. In this thread, posters are trying to describe themselves or others, as having the trait of tznius.
In Yiddish an adjective was made out of the noun, using Yiddish grammar: That word is “TZNIUSDIK“. Tzniusdik is a word that DESCRIBES either a person, or a behavior, or a type of clothing.
A person can</can> be Tzniusdik Just like a person can be hungry or altruistic. (adjectives)
For decades, in the United States, religious Jews who speak English have maintained yiddish terms for certain Jewish objects, practices, or ideas. We daven. We wash negel vasser. We fargin others. And we hopefully are Tzniusdik.
In Hebrew one would say that a person dresses or acts “Bitznius” (with tznius). There IS a descriptive noun in Hebrew for one who dresses or acts in this way. That person is a Tzanua צנוע (male), or a Tzinuah צנועה (female). The person would not be called a “tznius”.
It seems like the current generation has an aversion to using the Yiddish term, but they have not replaced it with an English one! I suppose it would be reasonable to say “I act or dress tsniusly” (an adverb describing the verb act or the verb dress). However, that term hasn’t taken off as of yet! I haven’t yet found anyone who has properly “Englishized” (my own made up term) the word tniusdik. Instead the Hebrew noun tznius is being used incorrectly as an adjective,
For those of us who typically use proper Grammar, hearing a noun used incorrectly, or as an adjective distracts from the subject just as much as this post distracts from the topic of the thread!
You may think you are not particular about grammar, but If someone said to you “I am Science”, instead of saying “I am a Scientist”, I’m pretty sure you would correct them! They are both nouns, but only the second one can be properly used in that sentence, with the word “a” before it. The sentence “She is tznius” makes no sense. Grammatically, you could say “She is a tniusist”, but that word hasn’t taken off either.
Furthermore, If someone said “He is hunger” instead of “He is hungry” you would likely correct their use of a noun (hunger) in place of an adjective (hungry). Otherwise, you would lose track of the rest of their thought, as your mind gets dsitracted by that incongruous statement. (How can he be hunger?)
I have not come up with an Englishized word for the Yiddish term tniusdik. which means “has the characteristics of tznius”, and is an adjective according to Yiddish Grammar.
hunger is to hungry as
tnius is to tsniusdik. But that is Yiddish.
Modest, modesty, and modestly, are used by some, but they do not quite translate the Jewish concept of tznius satisfactorily! Can someone come up with a grammatically correct English ADJECTIVE derived from the Hebew noun tznius?
Until then, your language will be more intelligible if you just use the Yiddish adjective, instead of incorrectly using the Hebrew noun as a description!