This past week I heard someone use a Yiddish word I had never heard before: sitzfleisch.

I asked that person what the word means and was told:

“sitzfleisch means the ability to sit down and learn, to study, for extended periods of time.   It is the opposite of ADD.”

Literally translated into English, the word means “sit flesh” – a phrase that conjures quite the image of what the word is about.

Looking it up further online, I came up with a few more meanings that were also very interesting:

“The ability to endure or carry on with an activity.”

“A term used in chess to indicate winning by use of the glutei muscles–the habit of remaining stolid in one’s seat hour by hour, making moves that are sound but uninspired, until one’s opponent blunders through boredom.”