teomim

We've discussed ach and achot - brother and sister. Now lets look at a word for a subset of siblings - twins. The Hebrew word for twins, teomim תאומים - appears four times in the Tanach: twice in Bereshit (25:24, 38:27) and twice in Shir HaShirim (4:5, 7:4). The singular form - תאום teom - never appears. According to Ben-Yehuda, it never appears in the singular in Talmudic Hebrew either - but that's much harder for me to confirm, since I don't have a complete concordance of Talmudic Hebrew as I do for Biblical Hebrew. Jastrow does mention the singular feminine form - teuma תאומה - but not the singular masculine teom. Ben-Yehuda also notes that it isn't clear from the Biblical usage whether the word only meant two children born at the same time, or if it would be used for triplets or quadruplets as well.


The parallel verbal root תאם finds its way into a number of verbs:

• תאם - to be duplicate, to be similar, to resemble, to correspond
  
• תיאם - to coordinate, so tium תיאום is coordination
  
• התאים - to suit, fit, match. According to some, the Biblical use (Shir HaShirim 4:2, 6:6) meant "to give birth to twins". Jastrow writes that in Talmudic Hebrew "to be twin-like, joined, adjoining." Klein adds that in Medieval Hebrew, this form of the verb was causative, and meant "he fitted, suited, conformed, adapted". In Modern Hebrew it took on the passive form, and began to mean "was fit, was suited, was adapted". The expression matim li מתאים לי means "it suits me" or, better, "it works for me".

One English word is related to the Hebrew word teom: the name Thomas. The Online Etymology Dictionary shows how the name came from the cognate Syriac תאמא:

from Gk. Thomas, of Aramaic origin and said to mean "a twin" (John's gospel refers to Thomas as ho legomenos didymos "called the twin;" cf. Syriac toma "twin," Arabic tau'am "twin"). Before the Conquest, found only as the name of a priest. After 1066, one of the most common given names.

Horowitz (p 284) adds that:

Tom like Jack is used to indicate the male of the species. Thus we have "tom Turkey" or "tom cat", the male and tougher variety of those interesting animals. A "tomboy" is a girl who acts like a boy.

(It should be noted that there are other explanations for "tomboy" - there are those that connect it to the word "tumble", because the girl dances - tumbles - around like a boy.)

Interestingly, a popular name for boys in Israel is Tom תום (pronounced "tome"). I'm guessing that Israelis like it because it has only one syllable (very common in secular Israeli first names) but also because it sounds more like an English name. I wonder how many of them know that this word too has Hebrew origins...

mesubin

I had thought of writing a post on mesubin over two years ago - when I started this site. We are all familiar with the fourth question at the Seder:

שֶׁבְּכָל הַלֵּילוֹת אָנוּ אוֹכְלִין בֵּין יוֹשְבִין וּבֵין מְסוּבִּין, הַלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה כּוּלָנוּ מְסוּבִּין.

This is generally translated as "On all other nights we eat either sitting or reclining, but on this night, we all recline." However, I recalled hearing or reading an explanation that said that mesubin in this case might mean "gathered around" and not "reclining".

So for two years this sat in my queue, until this year. And in the spirit of of the Haggadah, I decided to ask a question of my own: What was the original meaning of mesubin and when did it come to mean reclining? I asked this question of many experts - some regular readers of this site, others well known researchers. While I can't thank them all individually here - I would like to express my appreciation for all of their help.

So let's start explaining the term mesubin - מסובין (I'll discuss the vowelization of the word, with couple of alternatives at the end of the post.) I will review in parallel both the meaning of the word, and the practice of reclining.

Biblical Period: The root of the word mesubin is סבב, which appears frequently in Biblical Hebrew. However, it almost always means "surround, encircle, turn around." There are only two verses where it might be related to dining. One is Shir HaShirim 1:12 - עַד-שֶׁהַמֶּלֶךְ, בִּמְסִבּוֹ. While most translations have "while the king was at his table", Kaddari says it means "at his circle."

The other verse is from Shmuel I, and might be able to teach us more about the origin of the word. In chapter 16, the prophet Shmuel is visiting the family of Yishai, looking for the future king. The family is reluctant to bring the youngest brother, David, but Shmuel insists that they bring him. In verse 11, he says to bring David - כִּי לֹא-נָסֹב עַד-בֹּאוֹ פֹה. There are commentaries that explain this verse as "we will not continue (i.e. turn away) until he comes." But most translations offer "we will not sit down to eat until he comes". On the assumption that they were not going to be reclining on beds (as we will see shortly), the literal meaning would have been "sit around the table to eat". The association with reclining developed later.

Did they recline at meals in Biblical times? First of all, it is important to understand that the reclining we are discussing is not the leaning that we do today at the Seder. To eat while reclining meant reclining on a bed, with a small table below the bed for each diner. (Some pictures of this can be seen here.) However, as Meir Ish-Shalom points out in his commentary on the Haggadah Meir Ayin, the ideal images of dining in the Tanach involved all the participants in the meal sitting around one table:

בָּנֶיךָ, כִּשְׁתִלֵי זֵיתִים-- סָבִיב, לְשֻׁלְחָנֶךָ. - "Your sons, like olive saplings around your table" (Tehillim 128:3)

טָבְחָה טִבְחָהּ, מָסְכָה יֵינָהּ; אַף, עָרְכָה שֻׁלְחָנָהּ. - "She has prepared the feast, mixed the wine, and also set the table" (Mishlei 9:2)

The earliest examples of reclining at a meal are from the book of Amos. However, the practice is viewed as decadent and is highly criticized by the prophet:

וְעַל-בְּגָדִים חֲבֻלִים יַטּוּ, אֵצֶל כָּל-מִזְבֵּחַ; וְיֵין עֲנוּשִׁים יִשְׁתּוּ, בֵּית אֱלֹהֵיהֶם - "They recline by every altar on garments taken in pledge, and drink wine bought with fines they imposed, in the house of their god " (2:8)

הַשֹּׁכְבִים עַל-מִטּוֹת שֵׁן, וּסְרֻחִים עַל-עַרְשׂוֹתָם; וְאֹכְלִים כָּרִים מִצֹּאן, וַעֲגָלִים מִתּוֹךְ מַרְבֵּק - "They lie on ivory beds, lolling on their couches, feasting on lambs from the flock and on calves from the stalls".

The prophet Yechezkel also criticizes the practice: וְיָשַׁבְתְּ עַל-מִטָּה כְבוּדָּה, וְשֻׁלְחָן עָרוּךְ לְפָנֶיהָ - "you sat on a grand couch with a set table in front of it" (23:41).

By the time we get to the book of Esther, the practice was viewed more neutrally, and we find Esther reclining on a bed: וְהָמָן נֹפֵל עַל-הַמִּטָּה אֲשֶׁר אֶסְתֵּר עָלֶיהָ - "Haman fell on the bed where Esther reclined" (7:8). In fact, Ish-Shalom claims that the common practice of reclining at meals began during the Persian period, and from Persia spread to Greece and Rome.

Post Biblical Period: In the Book of Ben-Sira (9:11) we first find the certain association of סבב and reclining. (Segal says that perhaps here it is already in the hif'il form, which is the form we are familiar with - mesubin and haseiba.) Guggenheimer quotes 41:19 - "With a married woman do not lie on the elbow, and do not lie on a couch- אל תסב עמה- with her mixing drinks." Based on the verse from Shmuel above, we can say that perhaps the meaning changed from "sit around and eat" to "recline and eat" - because that was the common way of eating. Another possibility is that the root סבב developed from "revolve", to "rotate", to "recline".

Period of the Mishna: By Greek and Roman times, reclining was the only proper way for free people to eat (primarily men for the Greeks, with the Romans we also find women reclining more). The Targumim (Onkelos and Yonatan) translated nearly every verse which included sitting and eating with the Aramaic root סחר - by which they meant "reclining", which was the practice when the Targumim were composed. (The exception that Ish-Shalom brings is Yechezkel 44:3, since it refers to sitting and eating before God, where reclining would not have been respectful). This root is identical with סבב - both mean "to turn, surround". However, it is not clear to me that the root סחר independently means "to recline" in Aramaic. I have only found its use in translations, and it seems to me they were perhaps trying to use a word that was similar to סבב. Rav Hai Gaon on Brachot 42b (mentioned also in the Arukh, as well as a number of Rishonim) uses the translations of Onkelos on Bereshit 37:25 and 43:33 as proof that the Hebrew word mesubin originally meant "to sit around the bread". He doesn't mention reclining at all.

There was a rather elaborate method of proper dining that involved reclining. From here we get the word mesiba מסיבה - a festive meal which naturally included reclining. This type of meal is referred to in the Mishna in Pirkei Avot (4:21):

רבי יעקוב אומר, העולם הזה דומה לפרוזדוד בפני העולם הבא; התקן עצמך בפרוזדוד, כדי שתיכנס לטרקלין.

"Rabbi Yaakov said: This world is like a vestibule before the world to come; prepare yourself in the vestibule that you may enter the banquet hall [traklin]". The word traklin, which in some manuscripts is spelled טריקלין - triklin, comes from the Latin triclinium and Greek triklinion - "a dining room with three couches". The Tosefta (Brachot 4:8) explains more about what happened before entering the triclinium:

כיצד סדר הסעודה אורחין נכנסין ויושבין על גבי ספסלים וע"ג קתדראות עד שיכנסו כולן נכנסו כולן ונתנו להם לידים כל אחד ואחד נוטל ידו אחת מזגו להם את הכוס אחד ואחד מברך לעצמו הביאו להם פרפריות כל אחד ואחד מברך לעצמו עלו והסיבו נתנו להם לידים אע"פ שנוטל ידו אחת נותן לשתי ידיו מזגו להם את הכוס אע"פ שבירך על הראשונה מברך על השניה הביאו לפניהם פרפריות אע"פ שבירך על הראשונה מברך על השניה ואחד מברך לכולן [הביאו לאחד] שלש פרפריות אין [לו] רשות ליכנס

What is the order of the meal? The guests enter [the house] and sit on benches, and on chairs until all have entered. They all enter and they [servants] give them water for their hands. Each one washes one hand. They [servants] pour for them the cup; each one says the blessing for himself. They [servants] bring them the appetizers; each one says the blessing for himself. They [guests] go up [to the dining room] and they recline, for they [servants] give them [water] for their hands; although they have washed one hand, they now wash both hands. They [servants] pour for them the cup; although they have said the blessing over the first cup, they say a blessing also over the second. They [servants] bring them the dessert; although they said a blessing over the first one, they now say the blessing over the second, and one says the blessing for all of them. He who comes after the third course has no right to enter.

This Tosefta can help us understand the first Mishna of the tenth chapter of Pesachim. It says there:

ערב פסחים סמוך למנחה, לא יאכל אדם עד שתחשך. אפילו עני שבישראל, לא יאכל עד שיסב

"Pesach eve close to mincha, one may not eat until it becomes dark. And even a poor person in Israel may not eat unless he reclines."

The above translation is from the English Kehati, and it reflects the common understanding of the Mishna. But Tabori in his book Pesach Dorot, has a different understanding, in light of the above Tosefta. Since reclining was practiced at every meal, there didn't need to be a specific instruction to do so at the Seder. Rather the Mishna was telling the participants that they could not eat until (not unless) they recline. There could be no appetizers before the Seder meal as there were in other meals throughout the year.

Talmudic Period: In the times of the Amoraim, particularly in Bavel, reclining at meals was no longer the norm, but only an elite few practiced it. Haseiba had previously represented an established meal (unlike "casual" sitting). That status had been replaced by the significance of a number of diners sitting around one table (which indicated a communal meal). So the Amoraim interpreted the mishna in Pesachim to mean that reclining was an obligation in and of itself, because it represented a sign of freedom and high status. From here we get the halachic discussion about which parts of the seder require haseiva.

Geonim: By now reclining was so uncommon in ordinary meals, that it was regulated to the Seder. This was the time when the fourth question was formulated: "On all other nights we eat either sitting or reclining, but on this night, we all recline." (Ironically, they didn't really recline any other nights, but then again, they didn't probably eat much matza other nights of the year as well.) As the Vilna Gaon pointed out - that question was not included in the Mishna, since reclining was the common way of eating at that time. (Rav Kasher in the Haggadah Shleimah p. 115-6 has an entirely different approach, which Goldschmidt challenges in his Haggadah - p. 13, note 18).

Rishonim: By this point, reclining was viewed as so foreign that a number of Rishonim suggested dropping it from the Seder altogether, as it no longer even represented freedom or high status. However, due to the fact that the "strange" behavior could encourage children to ask questions, haseiva is still widely practiced today.

Modern Hebrew: We seem to have returned to our Biblical roots. Today mesubim מסובים means "diners, participants in a meal", and a mesiba means "party" with no reclining necessary. Perhaps even a better use of mesiba would be mesibat itonaim מסיבת עתונאים - "press conference", which describes a gathering where people are surrounding the speaker.

A note about the pronunciation: The early acharon R' Shabtai Sofer, quoting R' Yosef Kimchi (the father of the Radak) writes that the word מסבין should be pronounced musabin - like the מוּסַבֹּת that appears in Bamidbar 32:38. He claims that the common vowelization mesubin is likely a scribal error.

However, the Teimanim spell the word meisabin, as described here:

In the "Mah Nishtanah" in some Yemenite Haggadah texts the two forms messubin (מְסוּבִּין) and meissabin (מֵיסַבִּין) both appear in the following sequence: "bein yoshvim uvein m'ssubin" בין יושבין ובין מסובין (whether sitting or reclining), "wahalaylah hazeh kulanu meissabin" והלילה הזה כלנו מיסבין (but this night we all recline). In other texts the form m'ssubin appears twice as it does in the versions of Rav Sa'adiah Gaon and Maimonides. One Yemenite scholar - Rabbi Yechiya Bashiri who lived in the 16th century - saw this differentiation in form as a definite semantic difference, as well. He noted: "m'ssubin" (מסובין) – "they assembled, and "meisabin" (מיסבין) - in the sense of "reclining," since it was the custom of the sons of the kings to recline on their left sides. This Yemenite scholar interpreted "m'ssubin" (מְסוּבִּין) to mean "coming together," and "meisabin" מֵיסַבִּין as "reclining" (from the Hebrew "hasibah"הַסִּיבָּה ), or sitting at the table in a slightly reclined position, in the manner of a free man.

Both of the forms in question come from the root samoch - bet - bet סבב in the "hiphil" construction. The form m'ssubin מסובין should have been m'ssibin מסיבין (as in the root qof - lamed – lamedקלל : meikelמיקל / m'kilimמקילים ) How then did the form m'ssubin actually come into being? What we have here is a distinctive linguistic - phonetic phenomenon called assimilation, accordingly the chirak (ִ) in the letter samoch (ס) becomes a "u" sound in order to assimilate to the labial consonant which follows it immediately [ב=bet]: missibin > m'ssubin.

The form meisabin (מֵיסַבִּין) which is found in the Yemenite Haggadah may possibly be explained as another example of the preservation of a basic vowel form, specifically, the vowelized singular from meisav מֵיסַב (as it appears in the Yemenite tradition, as opposed to meiseiv מֵיסֵב as it is pronounced by other communities ) was left in its place in the plural form, as well (and not replaced by a shva) thus producing the form meisabin.

Despite the convincing arguments of R' Shabtai Sofer on the one hand, and the Yemenite scholars on the other, Kohut in the Aruch Hashalem justifies the common pronunciation mesubin. He writes that from the term mesiba was derived the single participant mesuba מסובה. The plural of that should be מסוביין mesubayin, but this became assimilated to mesubin.

karkom and crocus

The last of the Hebrew spices I'll be discussing (for now) is karkom כרכום. It too appears in Shir HaShirim (only once 4:14), and entered Greek (it's mentioned in Homer's Illiad), and then later Latin and English as "crocus":

1398, from L. crocus, from Gk. krokos "saffron, crocus," probably of Sem. origin (cf. Arab kurkum), ult. from Skt. kunkumam. The autumnal crocus (Crocus sativa) was a common source of yellow dye in Roman times, and was perhaps grown in England, where the word existed as O.E. croh, but this form of the word was forgotten by the time the plant was re-introduced in Western Europe by the Crusaders.

However, unlike some of the other spices we've seen, there are those that claim that the word entered Sanskrit from a Semitic language instead of the other way around. For example, Klein writes in his dictionary in his entry on karkom:

Related to Aramaic כרכמא, Syriac כורכמא, Arabic kurkum, Akkadian kurkanu ( = saffron). Old Indian kunku-man (= saffron) is probably a Semitic loan word.

However, not everyone agrees that the karkom should be identified as saffron, i.e. Crocus sativus. Both Steinberg and Kaddari quote Immanuel Low as saying that karkom was Curcuma longa - better known to us as turmeric.

Saffron and turmeric are not closely related botanically (turmeric is actually a kind of ginger), but they are both used to create a yellow color (both for food and as a dye). Saffron is actually the most expensive spice in the world, but turmeric is used as a cheaper substitute. So it is possible that karkom in whatever original language simply meant "yellow". From there it became "crocus" and "curcuma".

We see this in Talmudic Hebrew, where the verb כרכם meant "to be come yellow", and when one's face was נתכרכם - he was embarrassed or angry.

Interestingly, in Modern Hebrew we find both saffron and turmeric with almost the same spelling. Karkom is crocus, and also saffron, although ze'afran זעפרן is more commonly used. Ze'afran is borrowed from the Arabic (as is the English word "saffron"), where it apparently is related to the word asfar - "yellow" (the plant safflower - another saffron substitute - also got its name from this Arabic root). Turmeric in Arabic is kurkum, which now has the same meaning in Hebrew.

nard

We've discussed some of the other spices in the incense - today we'll discuss נרד - nerd (no, not the cousin of geek). As with kinamon - it also appears in Shir HaShirim, originates in India and gave its name to the same spice in English - in this case "nard" or "spikenard". Klein's entry:

Together with Aramaic נרדא and Akkadian lardu (of same meaning), Hebrew נרד probably derives from Indo-Iranian narda, in Old Latin nadah, nalah ( = reed). Old Latin naladam (= nard), is possibly Sanskritization of Greek nardos. However, according to Manfred Mayrhofer the above Semitic words probably derive from Old Indian naladam.

He writes that the word nartik נרתיק - "sheath" is related:

From narthex, genitive narthekos, which is of uncertain origin. It derives perhaps from Old Indian narda (= reed).

A narthex is also the lobby of a church.

aloe

My previous post discussed cinnamon / kinamon - a word dating back to biblical times. In Mishlei 7:17, we find kinamon listed with two other spices:

מֹר אֲהָלִים, וְקִנָּמוֹן

The JPS translates this as "myrrh, aloes and cinnamon". We've already discussed mor / myrrh. Let's take a look now at ahal / aloe.

Just as with myrrh and cinnamon, aloe is said to derive from the Hebrew ahal אהל:

O.E. aluwan (pl.) "fragrant resin of an E. Indian tree," a Biblical usage, from L. aloe, from Gk. aloe, translating Heb. ahalim (pl., perhaps ult. from a Dravidian language). The Gk. word probably was chosen for resemblance of sound to the Heb., since the Gk. and L. words originally referred to a genus of plants with bitter juice, used as a purgative drug, a sense which appeared in Eng. 1398. The word was then mis-applied to the American agave plant in 1682.

However, what exactly were the ahalim (and ahalot)? This seems to be a matter of dispute.

In addition to the verse in Mishlei, we find the word ahal three other times. In Tehilim 45:9, we have מֹר-וַאֲהָלוֹת קְצִיעוֹת - "myrrh and aloes and cassia", and in Shir HaShirim 4:14 there is מֹר, וַאֲהָלוֹת, עִם, כָּל-רָאשֵׁי בְשָׂמִים - "myrrh and aloes - all the choice perfumes." The fact that ahal is grouped together here with mor each time, and that all are talking about fragrant trees, leads to a general consensus that these verses are referring to a certain type of tree.

Klein, in his CEDEL, explains that this is the agarwood tree - also known as lignum aloes (thanks Mike G for the lookup):

aloe, n. -- L. aloe [there is long sign over the "e"], fr. Gk. [unaspirated alpha, lambda, omicron with an acute accent, eta], 'aloe', prob. borrowed fr. Heb. ahalim, ahaloth (pl.), wihc are perhaps borrowed fr. OI. agaruh, aguruh [the "h" has a dot under it in both words], 'aloewood', these latter being prob. of Dravidian origin. Cp. agalloch.

agalloch, n. aloewood. -- ModL., agallochum, fr. Gk. agallochon, agalochon [I'm transliterating the Greek here], 'aloe, aloewood', which is prob. a loan word from OI. aguruh [again, a dot under the "h"], 'aloewood'. Cp. eaglewood. Cp. also aloe.

eaglewood, n., agalloch. -- Loan translation of F. bois d'aigle, fr. Port. aguilla, 'aloewood', fr. Gk. agallochon, 'aloe, aloewood'; see agalloch. French bois d'aigle arose from a confusion of Port. aguila, 'aloewood', with Port. aguia, 'eagle'. See eagle.

This book writes that the related Indian name "gharu wood" derives from "the Sanskrit word connoting the wood's heaviness". An opposite, but related, opinion is mentioned in this article by Wilfred H. Schoff. However, it discusses the resin instead of the wood:

Why now the name agar or agur by which this Eastern resin is generally known in India? The Sanskrit lexicographers give a+guru, 'not heavy'

The root - whether it gave the name meaning "heavy" or "not heavy" - is also the source of the word "guru":

from Hindi guru "teacher, priest," from Skt. guru-s "one to be honored, teacher," lit. "heavy, weighty," from PIE base *gru- (see grave (adj.))

It's not clear to me if the gelatin like material "agar agar" is related to agar. On the one hand, the origin of the word(s) is Malay, but Malay borrowed many words from Sanskrit, so there could be a connection.

The remaining verse - Bamidbar 24:6 - isn't as clear. Here we have Bilaam blessing Israel:

כַּאֲהָלִים נָטַע ה', כַּאֲרָזִים עֲלֵי-מָיִם

"Like aloes planted by the Lord / Like cedars beside the water".

"Aloe" is a fair translation for ahal here as well. And indeed some point out that the parallel to cedars in the second half of the verse should be a tree as well, and therefore the agarwood tree is appropriate (Feliks here). Others (Immanuel Low, as quoted in Feliks and here) point out that unlike the imported spices mentioned in the other three verses, Bilaam was not likely to find agarwood trees in the steppes of Moav. (Of course those who claim that this verse is also talking about agarwood would point out that cedars were not in that exact area as well. They also don't grow "beside the water", so there is clearly poetic imagery here.)

So if ahal isn't referring to agarwood trees - what other aloes could we be talking about?

We find two other plants (not trees) called ahal. One is what most of us think of as aloe - "aloe vera". It is now spelled in Hebrew אלוי - alvay - and it appears in that spelling in Yerushalmi Shviit 35b. According to Klein, this seems to have been borrowed from Greek or Latin back into Hebrew.

The other is the iceplant - which is what Low (and Kaddari) claim Bilaam is referring to. It is mentioned in the Talmud (Shabbat 50b and 90a, although Rashi and Jastrow on 110b say in that case it means aloe vera), where Steinsaltz points out that it contains a significant amount of soda (the Targum on Iyov 9:30 translates lye - בור bor as אהלא ahala) , and was used for soap. They come up in large numbers after the rains, covering the Arava. So according to this theory, Bilaam was comparing the tents (ohalim אוהלים) of Israel to the ahalim covering the plain.

So how did two (or three) such different plants come to share the same name? In 1922, Schoff (linked above) offered a possible explanation. He rejects the Sanskrit etymology of the word ahal. I have some doubts about that, considering how universal that understanding is today. However, he does mention that:

The word 'aloe' seems to be derived from an Arabic root, lawaya, to bend or twist, and could refer to any product obtained by bending or doubling back a growing branch, or otherwise injuring it whereby an excrescence would be produced charged with accumulated and hardened sap.

This makes sense in regards to the medicinal aloe. So perhaps there were two similar words - one Semitic, one from Sanskrit. Both ended up as ahal (in Hebrew) or aloe (in English - eventually). While I have no concrete proof of this, it would certainly help explain some of the confusion found in both biblical and post-biblical sources - let alone the confusion about "aloe" on the internet today...

cinnamon

A reader asked what the connection is between the English word "cinnamon" and the Hebrew kinamon (or qinamon) קינמון.

Well, the English word comes from the Greek kinnamomon, which in turn was borrowed from the Hebrew / Phoenician. This etymology is rather old - the famous Greek historian Herodotus mentions it here, in discussing spices from Arabia:

Still more wonderful is the mode in which they collect the cinnamon. Where the wood grows, and what country produces it, they cannot tell- only some, following probability, relate that it comes from the country in which Bacchus was brought up. Great birds, they say, bring the sticks which we Greeks, taking the word from the Phoenicians, call cinnamon, and carry them up into the air to make their nests.

I had assumed that Hebrew and Phoenician were similar enough to simply share the word kinamon. However, Philologos writes that the Phoenicians probably borrowed the word from Hebrew:

The Greeks indeed had no clear idea of what the source of cinnamon was. Herodotus, according to whom the Greek word kinnamomon was borrowed from Phoenician traders, knew only that the latter purchased it from “the Arabians,” who “do not know where it comes from and what country produces it.” In the same breath, however, he then fancifully related that these same “Arabians,” by whom he presumably meant the Nabateans living in what is today Israel’s Negev and southern Jordan, collected the spice from the nests of large carrion-eating birds built of cinnamon bark and mud on “mountain precipices… which no man can climb.”
...

Phoenician, the West Semitic language of the seafaring peoples living along the Mediterranean coast north of Palestine, was closely related to Hebrew, and since Hebrew kinnamon occurs in the Bible while no parallel Phoenician text has survived, Hebrew is commonly given as the word’s source. Indeed, since cinnamon probably reached the Phoenicians from the Nabateans via a land route crossing Palestine, it is just as likely that the word entered Phoenician from Hebrew as the other way around.

So now the question needs to be asked: Where did the Hebrew word kinamon come from? Klein curtly notes that it is a "word of foreign origin".

One etymology mentioned here, suggests that:

English cinnamon, German Zimt, Lithuanian cinamonas, Belarusian cynamon [цынамон], Serbocroatian cimet [цимет], Yiddish tsimering [צימערינג] and Armenian ginamon [կինամոն] all derive from Latin cinnamomum, which was in turn a loan from Greek kinnamomon [κιννάμωμον]. The Greek had borrowed the word from a Semitic tongue, cf. Old Hebrew kinamom [קנמון] and Aramaic qunimun [ܩܘܢܝܡܘܢ]. However, these words can hardly be native Semitic, and their further origin is not known; it has been suggested that they ultimately stem from early Malaysian language and are thus related to modern Indonesian kayu manis “sweet wood” (although this is a problematic assumption).

The Malaysian origin is supposedly mentioned in the BDB - unfortunately, I no longer have access to that book. Can anyone confirm?

In the article I quoted above, Philologos rejects this theory:

For one thing, cinnamon, which is prepared from the bark of the young branches of an Asiatic tree, seems to have reached the Mediterranean world in ancient times not from Malaysia or Malay-speaking Indonesia but rather from China, in which it was known as kwei, and Sri Lanka, in whose native Singhalese language it is called kurundu. And for another thing, no other Eastern or Central Asian language listed by Katzer has a word resembling either kayu manis or “cinnamon” — which is qurfa in Arabic, darchin in Persian, durusita in Sanskrit, tuj in Gujarati, ilavangam in Tamil, op cheuy in Thai, chek tum phka loeng in Khmer, yuhk gwai in Cantonese, rou gui in Mandarin and so on. Even if the ancient Greeks had gotten their cinnamon from Malay speakers, it would have had to pass through many other hands on its way to them; how, then, would a Malay word for “cinnamon” have reached them without leaving its imprint anywhere else?

That makes sense to me, and in fact, most sources that quote the Malaysian theory go on to reject it.

In the end of the article, Philologos (can I call you Phil?) sticks with his theory that "our English word 'cinnamon' can be etymologically traced back no further than Hebrew kinamon."

However, I think that one of the points he made could actually help us find an earlier source. He mentioned that cinnamon originated in China. Kaddari writes that Loew (Die Flora der Juden II:107) rejects the suggestion that kinamon derived from the root קנה (reed) or קנמ as suggested by Delitzsch (as well as Jastrow and Gesenius.) Instead, he feels that the word refers to China - "Kina" in Hungarian (Wikipedia points out that it is so spelled in many Northern and Eastern European languages - Swedish, Norwegian, Hungarian, Danish, Bosnian, Serbian etc.)

I don't have access to Loew's works and couldn't read them in their original German even if I did. (If anyone out there can do both - please tell me!). But I'm guessing that he was influenced by this article by W. Desborough Cooley from 1849.

Cooley discusses the Chinese origin of the spice:

But we cannot suppose the Chinese to have been equally heedless of the riches scattered by nature over their hills, or remiss in turning such advantages to account; and indeed there is good reason for presuming that they were the earliest dealers in this spice. The Persian name for cinnamon is Darchini, which signifies Chinese wood; and as this name has been adopted in the languages of India with little or no change, it is evident that the article so called arrived in the latter country by the overland route, or through Persia.

He then goes on to take apart suggested etymologies (some of which we've seen before):

The Hebrew word kinamon is said by some to be derived from the Arabic verb kanima, to have a strong or foul smell - a derivation the flagrant absurdity of which is inconsistent with the fundamental laws of language.

...

But again, we are told that cinnamomum is derived from the Malayan kashiomanis, which signifies sweet wood. Now, to say nothing of the torture and mutilation necessary to change the latter word into the former, what can be more ridiculous than to seek the derivation of a word used on the shores of the Mediterranean 3000 years ago, in the Malayan, which we know only as a modern language ? Or how did this solitary Malayan term find its may into Phoenicia, without leaving a trace of its passage through India, Persia, or Arabia?

...

Cinnamomum. cardamomum and costamomum are apparently compound words, denoting so many species of amomum ... With respect to the first syllable of this name, Dr. Vincent supposed it to he derived from keneh (קנה), a cane, pipe, or tube, as if kinamomum signified pipe-amomum. But to this it may be objected, that the name in question, to whatever language it belongs, ought to serve the ends of language, by marking distinctly the object so named, but cinnamon appears to have been brought to market in early times in unpeeled twigs; and if, on the other hand, it were peeled off, then it had the rolled and tubular form in common with
cassia, so that in neither case could it have been appropriately called pipe-amomum.

...

An ingenious, and by no means unlikely, explanation of the fables in which the origin of cinnamon was involved by the early Greek writers, who relate that it was taken from the nests of birds, which had collected it in unknown regions, is suggested by Bochart. He supposes that the Greeks were deceived by some popular Phoenician etymology playing on the word קנן (kinnen), to build a nest. The fable, in short, originated in a quasi derivation, and proves at once the antiquity of the word, and the foreign origin of its first and disputed element.

And then he offers what he believes to be the most convincing etymology:

The only explanation then of the word cinnamon which does not savour of arbitrary etymological fancies, and which accords strictly with the principles regulating the formation of words, is that which considers it as meaning simply Chinese amomum or spice, and thus differing only by a slight and natural modification from the Persian name darchini, under which the spice in question was probably received by the Hebrews and Phoenicians.

While it might seem far to get from China to the Land of Israel, it should be noted that the word kinamon appears only three times in the Bible. Once (Shmot 30:23), is referring one of the spices in the incense, that was used in the Temple. The other two quotes - Shir HaShirim 4:14 and Mishlei 7:17 - are both from books attributed to Shlomo HaMelech (King Solomon), who was certainly known for trading with distant lands...

pardes and paradise

I'm trying to get back in to writing again. After spending several weeks indexing my sources, I thought I was ready to go. But it turned out that my home computer wasn't working well (talk about the shoemaker's child going barefoot!). So I was delayed again.

Well, I think I'm past those issues now - mostly I have to get into the routine of regular writing. Usually a good way for me to do that is to start a series of related posts. I came up with the idea of discussing the words in the mnemonic פרד"ס PaRDeS: פשט peshat, רמז remez, דרש derash, סוד sod. Of course it made sense to discuss the word pardes פרדס itself, and its connection to the English word "paradise".

So I checked my newly-created index, and lo and behold - everyone and his uncle has something to say about pardes and paradise. I'm not quite sure how to start, so I guess I'll just quote a source, and then add on additional sources that have something new.

Here's Klein's entry for pardes (the first definition is the biblical one):

1. park, orchard.
2. (Post Biblical Hebrew) esoteric philosophy
3. (New Hebrew) orange grove

From Avestic, of Old Persian origin. Compare Avestic pairidaeza (= enclosure), which is compounded of pairi (=around) and daeza (=wall). The first element is cognate with Greek peri (=around, about). The second element is cognate with Greek teichos ( = wall). Greek paradeisos (= park, the garden of Eden, paradise), whence the Latin paradisus, is also of Old Persian origin. Aramaic פרדס, פרדסא is borrowed from Hebrew.

The Online Etymology Dictionary definition is similar:

c.1175, "Garden of Eden," from O.Fr. paradis, from L.L. paradisus, from Gk. paradeisos "park, paradise, Garden of Eden," from an Iranian source, cf. Avestan pairidaeza "enclosure, park" (Mod. Pers. and Arabic firdaus "garden, paradise"), compound of pairi- "around" + diz "to make, form (a wall)." The first element is cognate with Gk. peri- "around, about" (see peri-), the second is from PIE base *dheigh- "to form, build" (see dough). The Gk. word, originally used for an orchard or hunting park in Persia, was used in Septuagint to mean "Garden of Eden," and in New Testament translations of Luke xxiii.43 to mean "heaven" (a sense attested in Eng. from c.1205). Meaning "place like or compared to Paradise" is from c.1300.

The American Heritage Dictionary explains how the Persian term entered Greek:

The history of paradise is an extreme example of amelioration, the process by which a word comes to refer to something better than what it used to refer to. ... Zoroastrian religion encouraged maintaining arbors, orchards, and gardens, and even the kings of austere Sparta were edified by seeing the Great King of Persia planting and maintaining his own trees in his own garden. Xenophon, a Greek mercenary soldier who spent some time in the Persian army and later wrote histories, recorded the pairidaeza- surrounding the orchard as paradeisos, using it not to refer to the wall itself but to the huge parks that Persian nobles loved to build and hunt in. This Greek word was used in the Septuagint translation of Genesis to refer to the Garden of Eden, whence Old English eventually borrowed it around 1200.

The Encyclopedia Mikrait lists pardes as one of the Persian words that entered into Biblical Hebrew. It appears three times in the Tanach: Shir HaShirim 4:13, Kohelet 2:5, and Nechemiah 2:8. In these cases it has the general meaning of "orchard", compared to the specific sense in Greek of fenced off areas belonging to the king.

Kutscher points out that most of the Persian words that entered Hebrew at that time were related to governance, and therefore pardes probably originally was borrowed from the word referring to the parks or gardens of the king.

On the other hand, Ben Yehuda mentions that the word pardesu was borrowed from Persian to Late Babylonian (Kaddari also mentions Akkadian), and perhaps from here pardes entered Biblical Hebrew.

The book History of Paradise: THE GARDEN OF EDEN IN MYTH AND TRADITION writes that:

Then the Septuagint used paradeisos to translate both pardes and the more classic Hebrew word for garden, gan.

So if Xenophon lived from 431 - 355 BCE, the word had certainly entered Greek rather strongly, since it was used in the Greek translation of the Bible only a few centuries later, and not only for the similar sounding "pardes".

Steinberg's entry for pardes mentions that it was used to translate the word אשל (Bereshit 21:33) into Aramaic in the Targum Yerushalmi, as described in Sotah 10a. The meaning there is "an orchard with many types of fruits." Steinsaltz there writes that the word developed from specifically a pomegranate orchard (see Ibn Ezra on Kohelet 2:5, where he says that a gan has many types of trees, and a pardes has only one type), to an orchard of many types of trees (Vayikra Rabba 13), and finally an orchard where people would go to relax and play in. This last sense would seem to be the esoteric one that Klein mentioned above, as in the famous Talmudic statement "Four entered pardes" (Chagiga 14b.)

However, the Jewish Encylopedia has a slightly different understanding of pardes in that context:

The word pardes is used metaphorically for the veil surrounding the mystic philosophy (Hag. 14b), but not as a synonym for the Garden of Eden or paradise to identify a blissful heavenly abode for the righteous after death. The popular conception of paradise is expressedby the term "Gan 'Eden," in contradistinction to "Gehinnom" = "hell."

In any case, I stay far away from the Artscrollian theory mentioned here (although read the very interesting comments as well - no mention of Xenophon's early use however) that pardes was originally a Hebrew word...

stav and horef

Sukkot marks the change of seasons in Israel. In the past, we've discussed kayitz קיץ - "summer" and aviv אביב - "spring". Let's take a look now at the words stav סתיו and horef חורף.

Just as the names of the other two seasons had agricultural origins (kayitz - cutting down of figs, aviv - shooting forth of barley), so too do the names of the other two seasons. However, here, Modern Hebrew seems to have mixed up the order.

While today stav means "autumn", originally it referred to "winter, the rainy season". It appears once in the Tanach - Shir HaShirim 2:11. The surrounding verses are discussing the beauty of the spring, and our verse says that it is a nice time to walk, for "the stav is past, the rain is gone":
כִּי-הִנֵּה הַסְּתָו, עָבָר; הַגֶּשֶׁם, חָלַף הָלַךְ לוֹ

Stav continues to mean rainy season in Rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic as well, and Onkelos translates horef as stav in Bereshit 8:22.

On the other hand, it seems that horef (or choref) originally meant "harvest time, autumn" - and not today's "winter". Klein provides the following etymology:

Related to Arabic harafa (= he gathered fruit, plucked), harif (= freshly gathered fruit, autumn, fall)

Stahl points out that Arabic still has the original meaning (harif for autumn, shita for winter.)

How did the terms get mixed up in Modern Hebrew? I'm not sure. Perhaps stav fell out of general use, and then horef took up all the time between summer and spring. When a word was needed for "autumn", stav was available. But whoever made that decision, didn't really read Shir HaShirim....

halva

Last year we discussed the origin of etrog. But I've recently found out that not only was the etrog used for a mitzva on Sukkot, but also had medicinal value as well.

In the gemara on Shabbat 109b, there is a discussion of antidotes if a person drinks uncovered water (where there is a concern that perhaps a snake would come overnight, drink some of the water, and inject its venom.) Rav Huna bar Yehuda suggests taking a sweet etrog, scooping out the inside, filling it with honey, and placing it on burning coals.

Interesting ancient medicine aside - why am I discussing this here? Because of the word for "sweet", describing the etrog: halita חליתא. The Aramaic adjectives חלא and חלי mean "sweet".

A certain relative of the Aramaic is the Arabic hilu, meaning sweet. From here we get the name of the sweet confection halva, which has entered into Hebrew, English, Turkish and many other languages.

Another related Arabic word that entered into Hebrew - this time slang - is אחלה achla, meaning "great, excellent", but originally meaning "sweet". (I used to think the phrase achla gever אחלה גבר - "a great guy", meant "(he's) the brother of a guy". I guess to figure out things like that I needed to buy the books, that got me to start the blog, so you all benefit.)

So far we've seen Aramaic and Arabic roots meaning "sweet". Are there any Hebrew words with the same etymology?

We discussed once before how there is a theory that the word challah חלה might get its name due to its sweetness. When I wrote that post, I quoted Stahl. I now see that he probably got the idea from Ben Yehuda, who mentions the theory, but notes that "challah is not specifically sweet."

Klein writes that the biblical words for jewelry: chali חלי (Mishlei 25:12, Shir HaShirim 7:2) and chelya חליה (Hoshea 2:15) - also derive from the root חלה meaning "sweet". This too appears in Ben Yehuda who says that חלה can also mean the related "pleasant", as well as "sweet".

Lastly, we have the verb חלה - meaning "to implore", often found in the expression חילה את פניו chila et panav. The midrashim (Devarim Rabba 3:15) identify this root with "sweetness", and scholars (Ben Yehuda, Kaddari) do as well. The idea here is that by imploring to a person, or praying to God, the anger is sweetened, and reduced.

However, Kaddari does say that there is another theory - that the anger is weakened, softened. It would therefore be connected to the root חלה meaning - "to be weak, to be sick".

But even here, perhaps there's a connection to sweetness. Jastrow says the root חלה means "to soften" - which can apply in a positive sense - "to sweeten", or in a negative sense - "to be sick".

So going back to the gemara quoted in the beginning, I wonder if there wasn't some play on words by having a healing etrog called "halita"...

talpiyot

Let's look at another word from Shir HaShirim - talpiyot (or talpiot) תלפיות. It too appears only once in the bible - Shir HaShirim 4:4 :

כְּמִגְדַּל דָּוִיד צַוָּארֵךְ, בָּנוּי לְתַלְפִּיּוֹת; אֶלֶף הַמָּגֵן תָּלוּי עָלָיו, כֹּל שִׁלְטֵי הַגִּבֹּרִים.

"Your neck is like the Tower of David, built l'talpiot; hung with a thousand shields - all the quivers of warriors"

The New JPS renders l'talpiyot as "built to hold weapons"; the old JPS has "built with turrets". But Klein casts a shadow on our attempt to determine the origin and meaning of this word:

Of uncertain etymology. Various attempts have been made to find the origin of this word, but they are all forced and farfetched.

(Doesn't farfetched sound like a Yiddish word?)

Well, the least we can do here is try to list the "various attempts", and leave it to you to see which is the most likely.

1. There are those that claim talpiyot comes from the Greek telopos - and means "seen from afar" (tele, meaning "far" and opsis, "view, appearance"). We've discussed here some reasons to question Greek words in Shir HaShirim (although the Septuagint didn't translate this word at all but rather transliterated it, so not all the points in the previous post are relevant.)
   
2. Perhaps it is a place name - this could explain why the Septuagint transliterated it as Tel Pivoth.
3. The Daat Mikra suggest that talpiyot may mean "complete, flawless" from "connected, joined." Onkelos translates מחברת "connected" as lofei לופי in Shmot 26:4.
4. Another opinion mentioned in the Daat Mikra is that the root אלף means "to study" (as in ulpan, which we talked about here.) So the phrase could mean "worthy of gazing and examining".
5. Steinberg explains this in a slightly different way, by saying that the tower was where they taught the warriors archery - a sort of military academy.
   
6. Of course there is the well known Talmudic explanation from Brachot 31a: תל שכל פיות פונים אליו - "the mountain (tel) that all mouths (piyot) turn to" - Jerusalem in prayer. A nice drasha, but I haven't seen anyone claim that it is meant as a real etymology of the word.
7. A lesser known midrash is from Shir HaShirim Rabba, where it says מהו תלפיות - טטרגון - "What is talpiyot? A tetragon". Kraus writes here that this four-sided tower would have been like a ziggurat (also four-sided).
8. This site writes that:
   

   Honeyman suggests that תַלְפִּיּוֹת is a feminine plural noun with a standard nominative prefix ת and is derived from the verbal root לפא (“to arrange in stones”). Probably, the best solution is to relate this Hebrew root to Akkadian lapu (“to surround, enclose”), Arabic laffa or lifafah (“to envelope”), and Aramaic lpp and lp’ (“to interlace, entwine, plait”). This is the simplest solution and does not demand emending the text. The preposition לְ (lÿ) could denote “in respect to” and the colon בָּנוּי לְתַלְפִּיּוֹת could be translated “built in rows (of stones)” or “built in terraces.” Thus, the phrase “built in rows of stones” refers to the outer walls of a tower built in spiraling rows of stones or built in terraces. This is a comparison of sight: (1) her neck was long and symmetrical or (2) she was wearing a strand of beads or necklaces wrapped around her neck like a tower built in spiraling rows of stones.
   

9. As the same site above mentions: Ibn Ezra redivided לתלפיות as ל תל פיות “for suspending weapons” by taking פֵּיוֹת (“mouths” = edge of swords) as a reference to weaponry.
10. And again from the same site: Perles connects תַלְפִּיּוֹת to Akkadian tilpanu (“bow”)

I'm sure there are many more explanations, and I doubt any one answer will be able to discount the rest. But it's important to remember that Shir HaShirim is a poem - perhaps the greatest poem - and one aspect of poetry is that words are used as symbols, and can have different connotations for each reader.

apiryon

During Pesach we read Shir HaShirim (Song of Songs / Canticles), and I thought we'd look at some interesting words in this book.

Verse 3:9 reads as follows:

אַפִּרְיוֹן, עָשָׂה לוֹ הַמֶּלֶךְ שְׁלֹמֹה--מֵעֲצֵי, הַלְּבָנוֹן

"King Shlomo made him an apiryon of wood from Levanon"

What is this apiryon? It appears only here, and is generally translated as a palanquin, a closed bed with poles, carried on the shoulders of four bearers.


Many scholars believe that the word apiryon was borrowed from Greek. Klein summarizes this approach:

Usually regarded as a loan word from Greek phoreion ( = litter), from which it was formed with prosthetic א. Greek phoreion is related to phora ( a carrying, bringing) from the stem of pherein ( = to bear, carry), which is cognate with Latin ferre (of same meaning).

From the Greek we get words like pheromone and phosphorus, and from the Latin the English words transfer and fertile.

In addition, the Greek Septuagint translated the word אפריון as phoreion, reinforcing the connection.

However, many disagree with the theory that apiryon comes from Greek. Here are some of their reasons:

a) Greek words did not enter Hebrew at the time of the composition of Shir HaShirim. (Of course there are those who use this word as proof of a late composition or editing of Shir HaShirim.)

b) The prosthetic alef in apiryon is "inorganic and therefore difficult to explain" (Klein)

c) A better translation would be "canopy", and phoreion never has that meaning in Greek.

d) Apiryon was used for a wedding, and phoreion did not have that specific connotation. (Encylcopedia Mikrait)

e) The only reason the Septuagint used that translation is "due to its habit of translating Greek words as resemble the Hebrew in sound, even though they are only remotely related in meaning."

f) There is an Akkadian word apparu (or aparu) meaning "a covering of reeds" (related to the Talmudic word afar אפר - "pasture saturated with water, swamp" and afer אפר - "bandage" - Melachim I 20:38) as well as apar shelipi - "a turtle's shell". From here we can see that the root אפר could mean "covering", which would explain apiryon as a covered canopy. (Tur-Sinai)

g) Perhaps apiryon is related to the Sanskrit word paryanka - the source of the word palanquin. (BDB). A borrowing from Sanksrit (perhaps via Persian?) is more likely than a Greek word.

In any case, the word also appears in Rabbinic Hebrew (Sotah 9:14, Sotah 12a) where it does share the same meaning as the Greek word. In fact, Steinsaltz on Sotah 12a says that apiryon derives from the Greek phoreion (I'm not sure whether he chose to ignore the Biblical debate intentionally or not.)

Amos Chacham in the Daat Mikra on Shir HaShirim feels that the Rabbinic use of the word was influenced by the Septuagint translation.

paam

We've explained the origin of the term regel רגל for a festival. Well, the Torah provides a synonym for regel only a few verses away. In Shmot 23:14 we see:

שָׁלֹשׁ רְגָלִים, תָּחֹג לִי בַּשָּׁנָה

and in verse 17 we see:

שָׁלֹשׁ פְּעָמִים, בַּשָּׁנָה

Both are talking about "three times a year", and on that basis we can view regel as being equivalent to פעם pa'am - both mean "time, occasion". However, while everyone seems to agree that the original meaning of regel was "foot", there is disagreement about paam. Some view the original meaning also as foot (I think it can be seen in Kaddari's Dictionary and in the commentaries on Shmot of both Nachum Sarna (Chapter 27, note 34) and Amos Chacham (on 23:17) . This can be seen from such verses as Shir HaShirim 7:2: מַה-יָּפוּ פְעָמַיִךְ בַּנְּעָלִים - "How lovely are your feet in sandals" and Yishayahu 26:6 פַּעֲמֵי דַלִּים - "soles of the poor". And as Chacham points out, while paam mostly lost its meaning as "feet", regel kept its meaning as feet, but became less associated with "occasion".

(The association of paam with feet makes for some nice biblical imagery, but creates some strange phrases in Modern Hebrew. For example, foods that want to sound "classic" or "old-fashioned" claim to have a taam shel paam טעם של פעם , as in Treppenwitz's "shamenet shel pa'am". However, the idea of sour cream coming from feet isn't so appetizing.)

However, others, such as Klein, Steinberg and Almagor-Ramon, say that the earlier meaning was "to strike, to beat". From here the meaning went to "step" (both verb and noun), and from there both to "foot" and to "occurrence, time". The meaning of "to strike, to beat" is maintained in such verbs as התפעם - "was disturbed, troubled", peimot פעימות "heartbeats" or "strokes/ strikes" (who remembers the peimot promised after the Wye Agreement?) and paamon פעמון - bell.

lavan

The color white in Hebrew is lavan לבן, and not surprisingly, we find many words that are directly related to this root:

• levana - לבנה - a poetic form of "moon", as appears in Yeshayahu 24:23, 30:26 and Shir HaShirim 6:10. Literally, "the white one".
• Levanon (Lebanon) - לבנון - named after the snow-capped, white mountain range
• leben - לבן In Arabic, laban means milk, and a form of coagulated sour milk (like yogurt) is called leben in Hebrew, and a cheese made from leben is called labaneh.
• levona - לבונה - frankincense. Klein writes that it is so called from its white color.
• livneh - לבנה - Styrax, birch. According to Klein, it literally means "the white tree", which is also the origin of "birch".
• the verbs ללבן and להלבין mean, in addition to "be white" or "make white", to make white hot (libun ליבון), to launder (also money laundering - halbanat hon הלבנת הון), to clarify, and to embarrass (להלבין פני חברו - literally "to make his face white").

One word with the root לבן that is not connected to "white" is levenah לבנה - brick. In fact, we find a brick of sapir (sapphire) in Shmot 24:10. From levenah we get the word malben מלבן - rectangle, from the shape of the brick, or the shape of the mold the brick was formed in (Nachum 3:14).

Steinberg does connect levenah and lavan, by saying that the root לבן means "to burn". This can lead to the creation of bricks on the one hand, and the color white on the other.

Rosenthal mentions levanim in Modern Israeli slang having the association of Ashkenazim, soldiers in the Navy, and (not in Rosenthal) undergarments. And if I'm already mentioning undergarments, here's a great story from a friend about mixing up the meaning of lavan:

For Chanukah, all the parents in my son's gan were asked to send "garbayim lebanot". My husband and I read the note he brought home and quickly realized that we didn't need to do anything - only the girls needed to bring a pair of socks. The next day at the gan I was reprimanded for not sending socks with my son to gan - Oh, I quickly realized, all the kids needed to bring in a pair of girl's socks. So I sent my son to gan with a pair of pretty pink socks with lace around the top. When I picked him up the next day, I was again reprimanded - "the socks have to be white so they glow in the dark - why did you send pink?" "Oh garbayim LEVANOT" How was I supposed to know?

I told the story to a friend of mine who is an ulpan teacher, whose son is in the same
gan and she said that it was a natural mistake - socks are masculine so they should have asked me to send "garbayim levanim". I'm not sure that this would necessarily have helped me - I would probably have sent a pair of blue tube socks the first day.

shachor

Is shachor (shahor) שחור - "black" related to shachar (shahar) שחר - "dawn"? The best way to tell would be to see if there are common or divergent etymologies.

Klein, who tends to be more conservative in these questions, shows different derivations. Shachor, he writes, is related to Syrian שוחרא shuchra and Akkadian shuru, meaning "coal". On the other hand, shachar is related to Moabite שחרת, JAram שחרא, Arabic sahar, Akkadian sheru and shirtu - all meaning "dawn".

Steinberg also provides different etymologies. He writes that shachar is related to צחר, צהר and זהר - all meaning "to shine", whereas shachor is the Shaph'el form of חרה - "to burn". For an example, he writes that the Targum for Iyov 30:30 offers שחם for שחר - also Shaph'el of חם, "to be warm".

However, there are those that disagree, and find a connection. Almagor-Ramon writes that there is a phenomenon in Hebrew and other languages, where when there is a root that has words which approach the limit of that meaning, from that limit they have a tendency to switch meanings. For an example, she writes that at night, everything is black (shachor), and toward the end of the night, on the limit, when there is already more light than black, we still refer to that period as shachar - dawn. This concept is used in word games called "synonym chains" as described here.

This site quotes a couple of Rabbinic sources:

Immediately before the rise of the morning star, the night is at its darkest...(Midrash Shocher Tov)

Shachar---"morning" or "dawn"---is related to shachor---"black"---because the moment immediately preceding the dawn is the blackest, darkest part of the night. (Vilna Gaon, Avnei Eliyahu)

It even goes so far as to suggest that the expression "It is always darkest before the dawn" has its origins in the connection between shachar and shachor. Curiously, even Klein gives three definitions to shachar: 1) dawn, 2) daybreak 3) the blackness preceding the dawn (emphasis mine).

One verb that everyone connects is שחר - "to seek, to search". Klein writes:

Probably derived from שחר ( = dawn), whence arose the meaning 'to rise early in the morning; to go out early in the morning and seek', whence 'to turn toward'.

Jastrow offers "to break through, dig, to search, seek" - and from here to the break of dawn.

Other derivatives of shachar are shacharit שחרית (the time of, and the name of the morning prayer) and shocher שוחר - a fan, a friend, as in שוחר שלום - "a lover of peace".

Shachar can also mean "meaning, sense, significance". This derives from Yeshayahu 8:20 - אֲשֶׁר אֵין-לוֹ שָׁחַר - which literally meant "with no dawn", for no light will be shone upon it. Today the expression often refers to rumors "that have no foundation".

Whether or not shachar and shachor are connected, there is one word that people derive from one or the other. In Kohelet 11:10, we find the pairing of הַיַּלְדוּת וְהַשַּׁחֲרוּת - childhood and youth (shacharut). Ibn Ezra connects shacharut to dawn, the beginning of a person's life. The Targum indicates that shacharut means youth due to the darkness of hair (יומי דאוכמות שער).

As we've done with the other colors, we should also ask: does shachor only mean black? Kaddari writes that there are times when shachor means the color black (VaYikra 13:31), and other times where it means "dark" (Shir HaShirim 1:5-6).

In Modern Hebrew slang, shachor can refer to the Haredim, the black market, and members of the Tank Corp in the army.

tzvi

Another kosher animal mentioned in our parasha (Re'eh) is the tzvi צבי - gazelle. ("Gazelle" also has Semitic roots, coming from the Arabic ghazal, but other than this guess, I haven't found any Hebrew cognate.) Is there a connection between the gazelle and the Land of Israel - as in the phrase Eretz HaTzvi?

Horowitz, in his section on how some Hebrew consonants are actually two different letters writes that tzvi - "delight, ornament" and tzvi - "gazelle" are not related. He writes:

For centuries scholars, believing there was only one root here, connected the two meanings by saying that the gazelle was a thing of beauty, a delight. But actually these two words are from different roots; the צ 's are different.

Klein also shows two different roots. For the tzvi meaning gazelle, he writes:

Related to Aram-Syr טביא, Arabic zaby, Akka. sabitu (= gazelle).

He also mentions that this is the origin of the name Tabitha.

As for the meaning of "beauty", he connects it to the root צבה - meaning "to wish, desire". This verb is found in Aramaic Daniel 6:18, in the Aramaic translations to Biblical Hebrew words such as חשק, חפץ and רצון (all meaning will or desire), and in the Talmud as well (Yoma 86b, 87a). Therefore a translation of Eretz HaTzvi could be "a desirable land", which would pair up well with the phrase ארץ חמדה - Eretz Hemda, which means the same thing.

From this root we also get the Hebrew word צביון tzivyon, which originally meant "will or desire", later became "beauty", and in Modern Hebrew means "character, nature".

However, all that said, I don't think we need to entirely disconnect "gazelle" from "beauty". While they come from different roots etymologically, the gazelle is certainly a beautiful animal. In fact, in Shir HaShirim it is used often as a metaphor for the beloved. I would assume that Shir HaShirim was using two commonly known words in a poetic way to make an association between one another.