shtick

shtick

slang A particular gimmick, routine, or characteristic that distinguishes one or sets one apart from others. Originally from Yiddish. The restaurant's whole shtick is that your table is locked inside of a cage and, periodically, the lights go out while people in costumes come out to try to scare you. I tried writing more serious literary novels, but I realized that cheesy thrillers are just my shtick.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • 1FTR
  • drive (one) out of office
  • force (one) out of office
  • force out of office
  • give (one) (one's) head
  • give head
  • give somebody their head
  • give someone their head
  • cooking for one
  • as one door closes, another opens
References in periodicals archive
Etymologically speaking the word shtick has Yiddish origins but is also closely related to German word 'stuck', not be confused with 'stuck-up'.
These days you don't have to be a Jewish comedian to have a shtick. It is one of those Yiddish expressions that has completed its journey into everyday English.
There are electro-disco confections aplenty, including "I Don't Feel Like Dancin"--the best floor-filler ever about playing the wallflower, complete with Elton John on piano--but the standout track comes toward the end, with all histrionics set aside for the captivating mid-tempo love song "Might Tell You Tonight." A band that can craft something this sublime doesn't need to lean heavily on bells and whistles to connect--there's nothing here as shameless as their breakthrough cover of "Comfortably Numb"--and they wisely keep glitzy shtick to a minimum throughout the stellar Ta-Dah.
Sorrentino had a shtick, always had the same shtick, a simple and wonderful shtick that is almost impossible to reproduce.
Fifteen years after he took his shtick global, the hunt for cliche itself has become the main point of his journalism.
"They're in, they do their shtick, and they're out," Miller said.
Transgression today takes the derisory form of Marilyn Manson's carefully calculated marketing shtick. Is there any sexual practice so extreme that it hasn't found its niche online, where videos featuring it are profitably marketed and where its ins and outs are analyzed in minute detail by its fans?
The Shtick: Held at the LGBT Center in New York City, these events draw numerous lesbians.
Strengths: Ability to play The Lackey, great command of Jessee shtick, including gratuitous use of the word "buns"
"I thought country was rightwing, cornball shtick," Langford says during an interview between stops on a tour.
Perhaps some of this is "shtick" designed to enhance the power of the message, but that message would nonetheless fail to resonate if I were disingenuous.
This hurts here when we learn that some of Fela's shtick was indeed visionary and prophetic, but some of it Dadaist nonsense.
"It was really hard for me to drop some of my shtick and be vulnerable.
TRY GETTING THE CROWD TO CHANT, "BUSH IS A SCHMUCK; DON'T BUY HIS SHTICK." FOR YOUR BIG SPEECH COMING UP AT THE LONGSHOREMAN'S UNION, LET'S ANNOUNCE "THE EUROPEAN UNION IS MESHUGENAH!"
Baxter said the Elvis shtick, which has taken him around the world for performing and speaking engagements, started in 1996 after his two daughters persuaded him to enter an Elvis contest in Collingwood, Ont.