Long before that, the phrase made an appearance in New York City collegiate politics. The Daily Mail uncovered a 1967 article in the student newspaper of the City College of New York in which Ellen Turkish, a candidate on the losing slate for student council, said, “We got schlonged.” (As Ellen T. Comisso, she would go on to a distinguished career as a political scientist.)

Despite these scattered precedents, Trump’s usage rightly raised eyebrows for its leering undertones, given his track record of misogynistic comments. And his reliance on a Yiddish obscenity recalled other questionable moments of political rhetoric.

The most obvious echo is the moment in 1998 when Alfonse D’Amato, then the incumbent U.S. senator from New York, referred to his Democratic rival Chuck Schumer as a “putzhead” in a private breakfast with Jewish Republicans. “Putz,” like “schlong,” is a Yiddishism for “penis.” D’Amato’s supporters downplayed the epithet, with Jackie Mason and Raoul L. Felder writing in the New York Post that Schumer should instead have been called a “schmuck,” yet another phallic vulgarism from Yiddish. (Like “schlong,” “schmuck” has serpentine origins, likely from an Old Polish word meaning “grass snake.”) But D’Amato’s handling of the “putzhead” controversy did him no favors, and Schumer went on to victory in the general election.