badchen

plural badchens · alternative badchan · alternative badhan · alternative badkhan · alternative badkhen · alternative badkhn · alternative badkhon

1. JudaismA kind of Ashkenazic professional wedding entertainer, poet, and master of ceremonies originating in Eastern Europe.

   Already in the first centuries of the Common Era there existed professional badchonim, whose task it was to cheer the sad and to make peace between enemies, an aim indicating the high conception that the badchonim had of their profession.

   1929, Abraham Zevi Idelsohn, Jewish Music: Its Historical Development, page 436