Mr. Samuel Goldwyn once remarked, during a dinner table argument about psychiatry: “Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined. - Leo Rosten

The braggadocio aspect is important: a successful but modest man is ordinarily not called a k’nocker. A k’nocker is someone who works crossword puzzles — with a pen (especially if someone is watching).

when the overwhelming majority of Europeans were illiterate, it would have been hard to find a Jewish male over the age of five who could not read. Virtually every Jewish boy had to learn Hebrew.

What a farshtinkener business!” has the edge on “What a stinking business” in my opinion, because the sh is more eloquent than the s in the communication of obloquious nuances. It is also more chic to enlist a foreign word when driven to coarse utterance.