When I study gemara with some people, I often heard the sentences "he is dochak", "he's not so dochak". What does this word mean exactly ? I do not find it in the dictionnary.
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1Related: judaism.stackexchange.com/q/1731– FredDec 17, 2014 at 0:11
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2 Answers
The word "dochak" means forced (duchka d'sakina, for example, means the pressure (force) applied by a knife).
It usually means that an opinion does not fit so smoothly, either in the reading of the words or in logical follow-through, into the discussion at hand.
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So "it's dochak" means "it does not fit" ? While "he's not dochak" means "it fits into the logic of the sugya"?– JOJODec 16, 2014 at 20:22
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1@JOJO "He's not dochak" is a bit of a grammatically liberal use of the word (which isn't so bad when you are using a Hebrew word in an English sentence), but it could mean either that his opinion fits nicely into the words, or that his opinion is logically very reasonable.– Y e zDec 16, 2014 at 20:26
דָּחוּק = dachuk. This is a Hebrew past participle meaning "strained" or "forced". It can also be used to mean "implausible".
Examples in Yeshivish:
I.
That explanation is so dachuk !
is equivalent to
That explanation is so forced!
II.
He tried to be metaretz Rabbi Akiva Eiger's kasha on the Taz, but his s'vara was dachuk.
is equivalent to
He tried to resolve Rabbi Akiva Eiger's difficulty with the Taz, but his reasoning was implausible.
