achmar

Until now, the colors we've discussed have been directly used to describe objects. So while we may not know exactly what color kachol or yarok is, we do know it's a color. But today we're going to talk about a color that never directly appears in Hebrew or even Aramaic, and yet still may be the origin of many common Hebrew words.

In Arabic, achmar (ahmar) means "red." This is the origin of the name of the red palace, the Alhambra, in Granada, Spain:

from Arabic (al kal'at) al hamra "the red (castle)," from fem. of ahmuru "red." So called for the sun-dried bricks of which its outer walls were built.

Klein derives a number of Hebrew words from a root חמר, meaning "to be red":

• chemar חמר - bitumen, asphalt. "So called in allusion to its reddish-brown color". This view is quoted by Ibn Ezra ("Long Commentary") on Shmot 2:3.
• chamor חמור - donkey. "These words probably mean lit. 'the red animal'...For sense development cp. Spanish burro (= donkey), from Late Latin burricus, buricus (= a small horse), from burrus (= red), from Greek purros (= flame-colored, yellowish-red.)"
• yachmor יחמור - roebuck. "Probably lit. meaning 'the red animal."
• chomer חומר - clay, mortar and later meaning material, matter. "So called in allusion to the color of clay."

Klein provides two more meanings (apparently unrelated, according to him), for the root חמר.

a) To foam up, boil, ferment. From here he derives:

• chamira חמירא - leaven. This Aramaic word is familiar from the declaration said when burning chametz before Pesach.
• chemer חמר - wine. Again an Aramaic word, used for example in the halachic concept "chamar medina" חמר מדינה - a drink used in some locations instead of wine.
• חמרמר - to be in a ferment.

However, there are opinions that connect all three of these meanings to the color red. For example, there are those that claim that fermentation, boiling is related to inflammation - which is related to red. Kaddari and Daat Mikra translate חמרמרו in Iyov 16:16 as "became red". And wine, while certainly fermented, is also red - as seen in Devarim 32:14 וְדַם-עֵנָב, תִּשְׁתֶּה-חָמֶר "They drank the blood (dam) of grapes for wine (chamer)." Radak on Yishayahu 27:2 also comments that "chemer means redness, for the importance of wine is its redness, and red in Arabic is ilchamer."

From all these meanings - wine, be in a ferment - the Academy of the Hebrew language came up with the term chamarmoret חמרמורת - for "hangover".

b) To heap, burden, make heavy, be stringent. From this meaning we get:

• chamur חמור - strict, and chumra חומרה - stringency. Also chomer of "kal v'chomer" קל וחומר- a fortiori, or major to minor inference.
• chomer חומר- heap, name of a dry measure.

Kaddari quotes one scholar as saying that this meaning - burden - may be the origin of chamor (donkey), for it serves as a beast of burden. There are those that see Shoftim 15:16 as a play on words in this regard. Rosenthal (here, discussing the root חמר in general) claims that the name chamor may derive from the stubborn nature of the animal (although in his slang dictionary, he says that a chamor is a fool.)

charutz

When discussing yarok and katom, I mentioned a word for gold - charutz חרוץ ( or harutz / haruts / charuts). The root חרץ has two other meanings - "to cut" (source of the word charitz חריץ - crack) and "to be alert, diligent". Outside of Steinberg (who I mentioned in katom), no one connects charutz as gold with the other two meanings (although Kaddari does quote one source as saying that the two verbs are related.)

On charutz, Klein writes:

Related to Phoen. חרץ, Ugar. hrs, Akka. hurasu (= gold; lit. the yellow metal). cp. Aram.-Syr. חרץ (to be yellow). cp. also Mitanni hiaruka ( = gold) which is a Semitic loan word.

Kutscher writes that charutz is the source of the Greek chrysos, also meaning gold. From chrysos we get such words as chrysalsis and chrysanthemum (but not Chrysler).

uchmanit

Now that we've covered the basic colors, we'll look at a few words in Hebrew based on colors in related Semitic languages. As we've seen before, אוכמה means black in Aramaic. From here we get the word uchmanit אוכמנית - blackberry. All nice and good, except that I always learned that uchmanit meant blueberry! Well, it turns out that uchmanit means both blueberry and blackberry in Hebrew. Although this may be due to the fact that the Academy of the Hebrew Language does not know what a blackberry is. If you look up uchmanit, they say blackberry, but give the Latin name Vaccinium Myrtillus, which is defined as a bilberry, a type of blueberry. The blackberry is from the genus Rubus, which the Academy of the Hebrew Language translates as פטל petel (which is more commonly known as raspberry, but that's another species in the same family.)

So you'd think that blackberries should be called uchmaniyot, and blueberries called something else - due to their blue color. But before we rush to judgment, I'll end off with this classic quote from George Carlin:

Why is there no blue food? I can't find blue food - I can't find the flavor of blue! I mean, green is lime; yellow is lemon; orange is orange; red is cherry; what's blue? There's no blue! Oh, they say, "Blueberries!" Uh-uh; blue on the vine, purple on the plate. There's no blue food! Where is the blue food? We want the blue food! Probably instores immortality! They're keeping it from us!

chum

After several days of writing about colors, I found this very interesting article in the Jewish Encyclopedia on "Color". It deals with many of the same issues I've discussed, with some new insights (for me) into the identity and etymology of the the words for colors in Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew. One particulary interesting question raised is why there are so few words for colors in Hebrew. The authors write:

The scarcity of color-names found in the Bible and other ancient literatures has been differently accounted for by various scholars. All that can with certainty be said of the ancients in this respect is that their color vocabulary was undeveloped.

To the psychological reasons for such an undeveloped state among all nations of antiquity (compare Wundt, "Völkerpsychologie: Die Sprache," ii. 513, 514) was added, in the case of the Israelites, the religious prohibition of idolatry at a period of history when painting, like other arts, was largely, if not altogether, in the service of idolatry. Needlework in colors, as well as dyed stuffs, was indeed known in Israel in very early times, but the coloring was in all probability of a simple kind.

That provides a significant contrast to the ideas mentioned in my original color post, from which one could conclude that the lack of color names pointed to lack of progress in a society.

In the section "Degrees of Darkness", the article gives the following explanation for chum חום:

"hum" (literally, "hot," then "dark," "brown") is used of the wool of sheep (Gen. xxx. 32 and passim).

The text quoted here is the story where Yaakov claims from Lavan the chum colored sheep.
Klein provides a similar etymology:

Probably from חום (= to be warm), which is related to חמם, hence lit. meaning 'resembling in color to something burned'.

However, there is a debate amongst the commentaries as to the identity of the chum referred to in Bereshit 30. Rashi says chum means ros, similar to red. Rav Saadia Gaon, Ibn Ezra and Radak (quoting Arabic) identify chum with shachor, black. Ramban agrees with Rashi, saying that if Yaakov had claimed the black sheep, Lavan would not have agreed, for this is a very common color for sheep. (Kaddari quotes Ludwig Koehler as saying that chum might not be a color at all, but meant "in heat" - מיוחם meyucham.)

Well, how do we resolve this disagreement in the Rishonim? And from where do we get the color brown, if the opinions presented are red and black? Split the difference. Even-Shoshan in his Concordance, translates chum as "reddish-black" and Kaddari suggests "red and black?".

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.

katom

Katom כתום - orange - is also a "new" color, coined for the first time in Modern Hebrew. Klein writes that it derives from ketem כתם - gold. Of ketem, he writes:

Of uncertain etymology. Perhaps borrowed from Akkadian. cp. Akka. kutimmu ( = goldsmith), which derives from Sumerian kudim, of same meaning.

This word for gold appears a number of times in the Tanach. The Daat Mikra consistently suggests that there are opinions that ketem is the name of the land where the gold comes from. They point out that in Egyptian writing the term "nb-n-ktm" is found, meaning "gold of ketem", perhaps from Nubia.

Kaddari mentions both of the above theories as to the etymology of ketem, but then quotes Driver as saying that it is related to an Arabic word (I can't really make it out, but it looks like the parallel consonants of כתם) meaning "a plant used to die hair black", and connected to the word ketem meaning "stain, dirty" in Rabbinic Hebrew.

Klein does not connect the two forms of ketem - he relates the meaning of "stain" to the Akkadian katamu - "to cover". Others, however, do connect the two. Steinberg, for example, says both meanings - "gold" and "stain" - of ketem are connected to an earlier meaning of "to write". Etymologically, this is done through a connection between כתם and כתב. The one instance of כתם meaning "to stain" in the Tanach, appears in Yirmiyahu 2:22, where it says נִכְתָּם עֲו‍ֹנֵךְ לְפָנַי - "your guilt is ingrained (stained) before me". Steinberg (and later Kaddari) compares this to Yirmiyahu 17:1 - חַטַּאת יְהוּדָה, כְּתוּבָה בְּעֵט בַּרְזֶל - "The guilt of Yehuda is inscribed with a stylus of iron".

As far as the connection between gold and writing, Steinberg claims that ketem refers to choice gold, and was so named because it was marked to indicate its value (see a similar opinion here). He makes a similar connection between the name of another type of gold - charutz חרוץ - and engrave חרץ (also חרט). From this meaning - writing - we can understand the name of the biblical poem michtam מכתם - which is the title of many of the chapters of Tehillim.

In this article, Moshe Zipor writes (my translation):

The noun ketem in the Tanach is synonymous with gold, particularly reddish-gold. From here we see that the verb נכתם (from Yirmiyahu 2:22) does not simply mean "stained", but "stained with the color red". In post-Biblical literature, ketem refers exclusively to the signs of niddah (menstruation) blood. (Other stains were called רבב).

Jastrow also defines ketem as "a dark red stain". As we have seen (and will continue to see) there are many words in Hebrew for "gold". I wonder if those who coined katom for "orange" did so due to the idea that ketem has a combination of gold (yellow) and red...

While Rosenthal does not give a slang association to katom, it became the color associated with those opposed to the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and even now, those on the Right are still called ketomim.

sagol

Unlike the colors we've discussed previously, sagol (not segol) סגול - purple/violet was created in Modern Hebrew. Klein writes that the name of the color comes from another new word - segel, meaning the flower violet. The word segel, in turn, derives from the Aramaic sigla סיגלא - which appears in Sanhedrin 99b, Shabbat 50b and Berachot 43b, and Steinsaltz identifies it with the sweet violet.

Klein writes that sigla is probably related to the Aramaic segola סגולא, meaning cluster of grapes. He doesn't explain the connection - Jastrow suggests that sigla means "a bunch of violets". This term appears in Yerushalmi Peah 7, and Steinsaltz writes that it is an Aramaic variation of eshkol אשכול - also meaning a cluster of grapes. It appears in Targum Yonatan on Bamidbar 14:23 as a translation to eshkol. From segola we get the name of the vowel segol סגול - which also looks like a cluster of grapes.

What about the meaning of segula סגולה as treasure? Could the phrase am segula עם סגולה - mean "a purple nation"? While this site tries to establish a connection, I think it's not very likely. In fact, we have already seen that segula is related to the Akkadian sugullu - herd of cattle.

Rosenthal does not suggest any slang associationswith the color sagol.

yarok

An Israeli once asked me, "Isn't it difficult to write in English about Hebrew words?". I unknowingly paraphrased Salman Rushdie, who wrote "The only people who see the whole picture are the ones who step out of the frame." This seems to be nowhere more true than in my posts describing colors. Take yarok ירוק for example. While in Modern Hebrew it means "green", there are those who say it once meant yellow or gold. Now how would I write that sentence in Hebrew? היום ירוק פירושו ירוק, אבל פעם ירוק היה צהוב או זהב? Yarok means yarok?

This is not only a challenge for those who write about colors in their own language, but it makes researching the issue difficult as well. For at some point, yarok does mean yarok, and kachol does mean kachol. But it becomes very hard to determine when that change happens. We've seen the ambiguity with some of the earlier colors, and we'll see it here with yarok as well.

Yarok appears only once in the Tanach - Iyov 39:8, but it is not clear from there exactly what color is being mentioned. A different form of the color - ירקרק yerakrak - appears three times: twice in Vayikra (13:49, 14:37), talking about tzaraat (like tzahov) and in Tehillim 68:14. Let's look at the latter.

The verse mentions בִּירַקְרַק חָרוּץ which we'll translate (for now) as "greenish gold". But the question here is really: is the gold yerakrak (and therefore different than common gold), or is the yerakrak gold (and is all yarok gold)? There is much evidence that yarok actually meant a goldish, yellow color. In Ugaritic yrq meant gold, and in Southern Arabic warq ורק still does.

We also have Rabbinic sources that connect the two. Tosfot (Sukkah 31b s.v. HaYarok) lists a number of such sources: Hullin 47b says yarok is like the yolk of an egg, and Tosefta Negaim 1:3 says it is the color of wax. Tosfot also mentions a very interesting Midrash, on Bereshit 14:14, where it says that Avraham וַיָּרֶק אֶת-חֲנִיכָיו - literally, he sent out his men. But Bereshit Rabba gives a number of explanations, all with the idea that וירק means "he made them shine (like gold)." (See Torah Shleimah Bereshit 14, #67 for a full explanation of the Midrash.)

(As far as the meaning of yerakrak vs yarok, it would seem that Ibn Ezra could be in trouble once again. The Sifra explains yerakrak, as ירוק שבירוקין - the most, strongest yarok. Ibn Ezra writes that the doubling indicates a weakening, so yerakrak would mean a pale yarok. In this case, Modern Hebrew seems to have taken the side of Ibn Ezra, for words with the last two letters of the root repeating - אדמדם, ירקרק - mean a less full version of that color.)

However, there are also Rabbinic sources that identify yarok with green - the above Tosfot mentions them. The Tosefta in Negaim writes that Sumchus said that yerakrak was like "the wing of a peacock." I had thought that was a sign of yarok meaning green, although this site takes an approach I had not yet seen (original Hebrew here):

What the sages called "green" is today called "tzivoni," meaning "colored." For example, the RAMA wrote, "What is called 'blue' is included in the category of green" [Yoreh Dei'ah 188:1]. The Tosefta compares the strongest green and the strongest red, asking: "What is the greenest of the green?" The answer given by Sumchus was, "like the tail of a peacock." In fact, a peacock has 365 different colors, with all possible colors, except red (Tanchuma, Tazriya) ... In principle, "yarok" is any color that is not red, and this led the Maharam of Rotenberg to write in response to a question, "All the colors blue, yellow, and green are included in the color 'yarok', green."

In any case, today yarok means only green. Perhaps it was through the influence of the words ירק and ירקות - meaning vegetables, or in English, "greens". Klein says that yerek derives from yarok, and many plants and vegetables are green, particularly the leaves. In Arabic, the related waraq means "leaf".

According to Steinberg, the etymological development should be reversed. He says the root ירק means "to empty out, to force out" and is related to the word reik ריק meaning "empty". From here the word ירק meaning "to spit" derives. A plant is called a yerek because it "comes out" from the ground. For sense development, he offers the German sprietzen - "to sprout" and spritzen - "to spray".

Rosenthal gives five meanings of yerukim in Israeli slang: a) environmentalists, b) soldiers from field units (due to their uniforms, as compared to Air Force and Navy), c) Border Police, d) dollars, and e) fans of Maccabi Haifa.

kachol

Unlike the other two primary colors we've discussed so far, kachol כחול (blue) does not appear in the Torah at all. In fact, the only appearance of any form of the root כחל is in Yechezkel 23:40: כָּחַלְתְּ עֵינַיִךְ - "you painted your eyes." The verb כחל meant exactly that - painting of the eyes (eyelids). We find it mentioned for cosmetic purposes (this is the source of the expression בלא כחל ובלא שרק - meaning "without additions". It literally means "without any makeup" and in Ketubot 17a, was used as praise for the bride - she would be beautiful even without any makeup.) The word מכחול - painters brush, has its origins here. The word kohl still has the meaning of "a cosmetic preparation, such as powdered antimony sulfide, used especially in the Middle East to darken the rims of the eyelids."

It was also used for medicinal purposes for the eyes, as found in Shabbat 78a. Stahl writes that the Arabic word for optometrist - כחאל - derives from this sense of the word.

Most of the sources I have read simply (Klein, for example) say that the color used in the eye makeup was blue, and from here we derive the name of the color kachol. I'm not fully convinced of this. While I can't really use Jastrow as a full concordance of the Talmudic literature, in none of his examples does he identify kachol - or any of its cognates - with "blue". He does, however, give a few examples where it actually refers to another color. For example, he identifies the stone כוחלין as carbuncle, which is red (see more about that here.) He also says that the origin of the Hebrew word for a cow's udder - כחל - is due to its reddish color. (Steinberg also says that the root כחל is related to חכל - which everyone agrees means "red"**.)

Jastrow also identifies the stone כוחלא (Kiddushin 12a, Bava Batra 4a) as being black. Perhaps he is being a bit biased here. In Bava Batra, while Rabbeinu Gershon does define כוחלא as black, Rashi suggests kachol - which clearly meant to him "blue". But even if Jastrow for some reason is choosing to deliberately ignore the possibility that כחל could mean blue, there are still a lot of open questions. My guess? I think probably כחל originally only meant "to paint", and later - at least by Rashi's time - kachol fully meant blue.

One interesting etymology that comes out of this word is that of the English word alcohol. Klein writes:

Arab. alkohl, vulgar pronunciation of alkuhl, from al (= the) and kohl, resp. kuhl (= antimony used for painting the eyelids), which is related to Hebrew כחל (= he painted the eyes with antimony). Its modern sense ('highly rectified spirits') is due to the analogy of the fitness of this powder.

Others say that the process of producing the makeup was similar to that of producing alcohol - hence the name.

According to Rosenthal, in Modern Israeli slang, k'cholim refers either to police officers or soldiers in the Air Force - both based on the blue color of their uniforms.

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** After publishing this post, I have found a notable source that disagrees. The Ramban on Bereshit 49:12 says that חכלילי means kachol, not red. However, it does not seem that he meant "blue" but rather "dark". For more information, see the Daat Mikra on the verse, and this article by Prof. Aaron Demsky: here in English, and here in Hebrew. There is an interesting archeological discovery with a First Temple jar saying "wine kachol". (A picture can be found in the Daat Mikra).

tzahov

Tzahov (tsahov) צהוב - yellow - is similar to adom אדום. Both follow the common vowel pattern for colors (see also shahor, kachol, yarok, etc) and appear a limited number of times in the Torah. Tzahov appears in VaYikra 13:30,32,36 describing the hair of someone suffering from tzaraat (I guess that's why The Living Torah offers the translation "blond".)

Targum Yonatan, and the Sifra both identify tzahov with a type of zahav זהב - gold. The Malbim and the Torah Temima both explain that identification by the similarity between the two words. Klein also writes that the two are related.

Rav Saadia Gaon and the Ibn Ezra give a different explanation for tzahov. Rav Saadia Gaon translates אצהב, and Ibn Ezra explains that in Arabic this is a very light color, approaching white. The Or HaChaim, who also knew Arabic, has a very hard time accepting the Ibn Ezra's approach, and is unwilling to reject the Sifra's explanation of zahav. He goes so far as to say that explanations such as these are what caused the Ibn Ezra to be not taken seriously by the rabbis over the generations.

The verb צהב means "to be bright, to shine". Interestingly, two other verbs beginning with the same two letters have the same meaning - צהל and צהר, but I have not found anyone who connects the three.

According to Rosenthal, besides having an association with yellow journalism, tzahov also indicates fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv.

adom

I'm starting a new series of posts today: a discussion of the Hebrew words for colors. Colors are particularly interesting to discuss from a linguistic point of view. First of all, it is logical that the names for colors should be connected to objects of the same color (I suppose "violets are blue" would be the exception, so I'll stick with "Violet, you're turning violet, Violet!"). Secondly, there have been many studies about how the awareness of colors develop with the progress of civilizations. (See Cecil Adams' classic article here, and for a Jewish point of view, see this post by Rishon Rishon and this discussion on the Avodah list.) So we can see the colors used in the Tanach, the Talmud and then in Modern Hebrew. I'll start by reviewing colors used in Modern Hebrew (of course some of them have more ancient roots). Today we'll discuss adom אדום - red.

I'm sure many people have noticed the connection between the words adom, adam אדם - man, dam דם blood and adama אדמה - soil / ground. Klein writes that they are indeed related, and provides the following development.

The first, most basic word is dam. Klein writes that it is "one of the few biradical nouns in Hebrew." (We've also seen delet and keshet among others.)

From dam we get adom - according to Klein meaning "the color of blood".

Adama (ground, soil, earth, land) derives from adom - originally meaning "the red arable ground".

Lastly, adam, Klein writes, properly means "the one formed from adama אדמה, the ground." He points out there is a similar development in Latin, where homo (man, source of "human") is related to humus (ground) - the source of exhume (to take out of the ground) and humble (lowly, "on the ground").

From adom, we get such words as odem אודם - lipstick, maadim מאדים - Mars (the red planet) and the nation of Edom.

According to Rosenthal, the term adumim has two meanings in modern Hebrew slang: a) fans of the teams belonging to the sports association HaPoel, or b) a slightly old-fashioned term for leftists.

africa

One of the theories as to the origin of the name of the continent Africa is from the Phoenician afar, which is identical to the Hebrew עפר. It will often be translated as "dust", but can also refer to "earth" or "soil". According to Take Our Word For It:

The -ica ending in those words comes from Latin -icus/-ica, and the Romans got that suffix from Greek -ikos, as in such words as komikos, grammatikos, and poetikos. The suffix -ikos was apparently one of the most frequently used in Greek, and it formed adjectives, making poetikos mean "in the manner of a poet". In general, -ikos meant "in the manner of", "pertaining to", or "of". Therefore, Africa, which came from Latin Africus, meant "of the Afro", the Afro being an ancient people of North Africa. Adrian Room, in Placenames of the World, suggests that Afro applied to the people of what is now Tunisia, and that the term derives from Arabic afar meaning "dust, earth", so that the Afro were etymologically "people of the desert".

I think that the authors are likely mistaken when they ascribe the origin to Arabic - I haven't seen that mentioned anywhere else.

Another meaning of afar is ashes. A word with similar sound and meaning is efer אפר, also "ashes". Klein writes:

According to Zimmern [Heinrich?], אפר is possibly a loan word from Akka. epiru(=earth, dust), hence properly identical with עפר (=dust).

Both efer and afar give root to the same color as well - עפור and אפור - afor, meaning gray. According to Steinberg, the gray color is where the Hebrew word for lead - עופרת oferet, gets its name.

When the founders of Modern Hebrew were looking for a word for "pencil" they looked at the European words bleistift (German) and mine de plomb (French) - both deriving from the original material used - lead. On this basis they (Ben Yehuda according to Stahl, Klausner according to Klein) coined the Hebrew word for pencil - iparon עפרון. I doubt either Ben Yehuda or Klausner would anticipate the urban legend known as Ani Iparon (quoted here, scroll down, and view the comments for more references.)

I have not seen anyone make a connection between afar and ofer עופר - meaning "young deer". The etymology of the town Ofra עופרה is also not clear - perhaps from one of the roots mentioned above. The Daat Mikra explains that the Arabs renamed Ofra as Taibe (from tov, good) because ofra means a demon in Arabic.

One name that certainly is not connected to afar is Oprah - as in Oprah Winfrey. She was given the name Orpah (Rut's sister-in-law) but it was mispronounced as Oprah, and the name stuck. So while the talk-show host may have her origins in Africa, her name and the continent's are not related.