The article argues that President Trump’s reference to a critic of Sen. Roger Marshall as a “Shylock-type guy” used a long-established English idiom for ruthless or high-interest business practices and did not constitute an antisemitic remark.

It notes that some media outlets and organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Council of Public Affairs, characterized the usage as antisemitic because the character in Shakespeare’s play is Jewish.

The author contends that such reactions inflate the definition of antisemitism and that the same standard of scrutiny should apply to claims made by the Trump administration itself regarding criticism of the Israeli government.

The name of Shylock, a character in William Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice has long been embraced in the English language as a means of referring to charging high interest for loans or engaging in business ruthlessly. That second meaning also applies to the name Scrooge from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carrol. “Scrooge” may refer as well to disliking people or their pursuit or attainment of happiness.

These are two examples of names from fiction and religious texts that have entered the English language — in various parts of speech — as shorthand for something........

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