Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a young male gentile, as referred to by a Jew; also occas. as adj.

1904		Sun. Times (Perth) 14 Aug. 4/7: And you couldn’t tell which was Shi-gutz or Yitch, / At the Hebrew Fancy Ball.
1910		Sun. Times (Perth) 3 July 2nd sect. 12/8: The Young Australia Giris League, which includes the Bresslers, Lubers, Shinebergs, Solomons, Yan Praags . and others, deny that they will use three balls in playing hockey. The shy-gutz who started the rumor will be inquested free of charge bv Pa Van P.
1919		Jewish Guardian (London) ‘Leaves from a Yiddish Lexicon’ 31 Oct. 9/2: A less complimentary term applied to young or unmarried Gentiles is ‘Shygetz,’ the feminine of which, ‘Shikse,’ is the customary term for a servant girl.
1959		Wisconsin Jewish (Milwaukee, WI) 27 Mar. 5/4: His favorite daughter is tempted into marrying a ‘shaygets’.
1969		P. Roth Portnoy’s Complaint 152: One of those ice-cold shaygets pricks, Jimmy or Johnny or Tod, who look, [...] who who talk like fighter-bomber pilots!
1977		D. Powis Signs of Crime 200: Shagetz Young Christian (or rather non-Jewish) male.
1983		Observer 6 Mar. 32/3: A male goy [...] is a sheygets and his mother a shikse.
1994		I. Shahak Jewish Hist., Jewish Religion 26: The entry Shaygets – whose main meaning is ‘a Gentile boy or young man’ – is an anomaly.
1994		Orlando Sentinel (FL) 8 Oct. 5/5: [personal advert] sheygets seeks [...] Wants to meet American or European female, 23-35.
1997		J. Starr Cold Caller 15: I was Catholic and Julie was Jewish [...] and I always felt she secretly resented me for being what her father called a shagetz.
2005		S. Auslander ‘The Metamorphosis’ in Beware of God (2007) 118: A tall shaygitz in jeans wearing a yarmulke and a tallis.
2005		M. Wex Born to Kvetch 68: Sheygets and shikse were meant as barriers, fences between Jewish youth and the easy sexuality of ‘the heathen who do not know God’ [...] Sheygets has lost most of its sexual charge [...] and tends to call forth an image of testosterone-fueled loutishness.
2017		St Louis Jewish Light (MI) 26 Apr. A21/1: Yiddish Word of the week — Shaygets [...] a gentile boy.

2. a mischievous rascal, a ‘charming devil’, whether Jewish or gentile.

1965		(con. 1944) E.M. Nathanson Dirty Dozen (2002) 56: You know what is yahrtzeit, you shagetz you.
1987		C. Sinclair Diaspora Blues 146: I recall the most intimate, endearing nickname my parents had for me was the Yiddish word shaygets.
2005		M. Wex Born to Kvetch 71: Calling [...] an attractive man a sheygets is not much different from calling a fat person Tiny.