From Yiddish 'mentsh,' from German 'Mensch' (person) — elevated from 'person' to 'truly good person' in Yiddish.
A person of integrity and honor; a good, admirable person.
From Yiddish 'mentsh' (a human being and, in its distinctively elevated Yiddish moral sense, a person of genuine integrity, decency, and human dignity). The Yiddish form derives from Middle High German 'mensch' (a human being, a person), from Old High German 'mennisco,' an adjective turned noun formed from 'man' (person, human being) + the adjective suffix '-isk-' (of the kind of, having the nature of), giving 'mannisco' — 'that which is of the nature of man.' Old High German 'man' descends from Proto-Germanic *mannaz (a human being, a person — the root was not sex-specific), which traces to PIE *man- or *menou- (man, human being — possibly related to PIE *men-, to think, giving the sense of the thinking being). The
In German, 'Mensch' just means 'person' — neutral, unremarkable. In Yiddish, it was elevated to mean 'a truly good person' — someone who embodies the best of what a human being can be. The semantic shift is itself a philosophical statement: to be a real person, a real human being, is to be decent, honest, and kind