What does “Schnick Schnack Schnuck” mean in German?

Schnick Schnack Schnuck is what Germans call Rock, Paper, Scissors. While English speakers say “rock… paper… scissors… shoot!”, Germans chant these three nonsense syllables and reveal their hand on Schnuck. The phrase probably comes from schnicken (“to flick/snap a finger”), and the i-a-u vowel step — schnick, schnack, schnuck — is a classic German playful-rhyme pattern, the same one behind tri-tra-trullala.

In the clip, two people use it to settle a genuinely high-stakes question: who has to eat the candy that one of them secretly poisoned. The chant flies out fast and naturally — “Schnick, Schnack, Schnuck” — exactly as any German kid would say it in a playground tie-break. The word also brushes up against Schnickschnack (= “knick-knacks,” “trivial stuff”), which shares the same snapping root. Rock, Paper, Scissors has ancient roots — a hand-game is recorded in Han-dynasty China — but the modern form took shape in Japan and only reached Europe in the early 20th century; the distinctive three-syllable German chant, though, is homegrown.