Coffee Break
Member
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2022
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- Korean
- Home Country
- South Korea
- Current Location
- South Korea
Hello everyone. I encountered this expression, "Knöwitall Jäcke", but am struggling to understand it. Could you please let me know what it means in the following sentences:
“He’s been living there ever since leaving Germany before the war.” She must have inherited this from her parents. They called it the war, not World War II. “Knows everything—”
“—about everything.” I knew the type.
“Just about. Knows every piece of recorded music.”
I pictured a fretful old garmento type hobbling on frayed slippers around a large gramophone. Tell me, Liebchen, what watch? Do you know that land where the citrus blooms? I wanted to make fun of him. “Another Knöwitall Jäcke,” I said. She caught my skepticism and my attempted humor.
- André Aciman, Eight White Nights, Third Night
This is a novel published in the United States of America in 2010. This novel is narrated by the nameless male protagonist. The protagonist meets Clara at a Christmas party in Manhattan. Two days after the party, Clara came to the protagonist's house at 8 o'clock in the morning and is bringing him to her friend, who knows a lot about recorded music.
Here, I wonder what the underlined expression means.
Regarding "know-it-all" and "Jack", I found in the dictionary that "a know-it-all" is a person who pretends to be knowledgeable about everything, and "Jack" might be related to the expression of "Jack of all trades".
But then I just cannot understand why there are those dots over "o" and "a", and the mysterious "e" at the end of "Jack". Would it be perhaps an attempt to make an English word sound like a German word...?
In case this might be helpful, As for "Jäcke", he is sometimes referred to as "Herr Jäcke" (By the way, his real name appears to be "Max" rather than "Jack"):
And as for "knöwitall", it appears again here in the same chapter:
I would very much appreciate your help.
“He’s been living there ever since leaving Germany before the war.” She must have inherited this from her parents. They called it the war, not World War II. “Knows everything—”
“—about everything.” I knew the type.
“Just about. Knows every piece of recorded music.”
I pictured a fretful old garmento type hobbling on frayed slippers around a large gramophone. Tell me, Liebchen, what watch? Do you know that land where the citrus blooms? I wanted to make fun of him. “Another Knöwitall Jäcke,” I said. She caught my skepticism and my attempted humor.
- André Aciman, Eight White Nights, Third Night
This is a novel published in the United States of America in 2010. This novel is narrated by the nameless male protagonist. The protagonist meets Clara at a Christmas party in Manhattan. Two days after the party, Clara came to the protagonist's house at 8 o'clock in the morning and is bringing him to her friend, who knows a lot about recorded music.
Here, I wonder what the underlined expression means.
Regarding "know-it-all" and "Jack", I found in the dictionary that "a know-it-all" is a person who pretends to be knowledgeable about everything, and "Jack" might be related to the expression of "Jack of all trades".
But then I just cannot understand why there are those dots over "o" and "a", and the mysterious "e" at the end of "Jack". Would it be perhaps an attempt to make an English word sound like a German word...?
In case this might be helpful, As for "Jäcke", he is sometimes referred to as "Herr Jäcke" (By the way, his real name appears to be "Max" rather than "Jack"):
And as for "knöwitall", it appears again here in the same chapter:
I would very much appreciate your help.
