tzfardea

The Hebrew word for "frog", צְפַרְדֵּעַ tzfardea, appears 13 times in the Tanakh. All of them are related to the plague in Egypt. Eleven of them are in the book of Shemot during the narrative of that plague, and two are from separate chapters of Tehillim recounting the plagues - Tehillim 78:45 and Tehillim 105:30.

Klein provides the following etymology:

Related to JAram. אוּרְדּעָא, עוּרדְּעָא, Syr. אוּרְדְּעָא, Arab. ḍafda‘, ḍifdi‘ (= frog).

He also points to his entry for the verb ערדע:

to croak; lit.: ‘to make the sound of the frog’. [From Aram. עֻרדּעָא (= frog), which is related to Heb. צְפַרְדֵּע.]

While Klein doesn't say it explicitly, many scholars claim that the origin of tzfardea is ultimately onomatopoeic - it sounds like the sound of a frog croaking (for example, see Encyclopedia Mikrait, entry צפרדע). This is more clearly seen in the Aramaic form urda or the Arabic form dafda, which both sound like a frog. The assumption is that Hebrew might have added a consonant to the Semitic root - either a resh to the version expressed in the Arabic form or a tzade to the one in the Aramaic form, creating a longer word which doesn't immediately carry the association of a frog's croak. The five letters of tzfardea are rare in Hebrew words, which led some scholars to propose that it was borrowed from Egyptian or another non-Semitic language. But since no evidence has been found in those languages for such a word, the onomatopoeia theory is the most convincing.

In his book "Wordplay" in Ancient Near Eastern Texts, Scott B. Noegel describes the use of this onomatopoeia as a literary device in the story of the plague (page 61):

The narrative depicting the plague of frogs offers an extraordinary display of onomatopoeia. Not only do we hear croaking in the very word ְצַפְרְדִּעים ṣǝp̄ardǝʿīm “frogs,” itself an onomatopoeia, we hear it eleven times in only sixteen verses, far more often than the story demands. Three of the consonants in the noun “frog” (p, r, ʿ ) repeat eight times in the title ַפְּרֹעה parʿōh “pharaoh.” Four times we also hear the sounds /r/ and /ṣ/ repeated in ִמְצָרִים miṣrāyīm “Egypt” (Exod 8:2) and ֶאֶרץִ מְצָרִים ʾɛrɛṣ miṣrāyīm “the land of Egypt” (Exod 8:1, 2, 3). In Exod 8:5, Moses asks pharaoh, “do you glorify yourself ( ִהְתָפֵּאר hiṯpāʾēr)?,” using a verb that reverberates the consonants p and r. 

Perhaps surprisingly (considering the parallels in the other Semitic languages), not all scholars identify the tzfardea as "frog", instead proposing the more threatening "crocodile." This is suggested by the description of the tzfardea in Tehillim 78:45:

יְשַׁלַּח בָּהֶם עָרֹב וַיֹּאכְלֵם וּצְפַרְדֵּעַ וַתַּשְׁחִיתֵם׃

He sent against them [Egypt] the horde [arov] to consume them and the tzfardea to destroy them.

A plague of frogs might be disturbing, but they wouldn't fit the word "destroy" here. Saadia Gaon in his Arabic translation to Tehillim therefore identifies the tzfardea with "crocodile" (although not in his commentary and translation of Shemot), and Ibn Ezra in his commentary on Shemot 7:27 cites this opinion before rejecting it in favor of the more common identification with "frog." Other commentaries who mention this approach include Rabbeinu Chananel, Ramban, Abarbanel, and Rabbeinu Bachye.

Frogs seem like a more likely candidate than crocodiles particularly due to the description in Shemot 7:28, where Moshe warns Pharoah that the tzfardea will "enter your palace, your bedchamber and your bed, the houses of your courtiers and your people, and your ovens and your kneading bowls." Frogs could easily swarm into ovens and kneading bowls, but crocodiles obviously could not. Similar imagery is found in Tehillim 105, which says the tzfardea were "swarming" (more appropriate for smaller animals like frogs) in the room of the king:

שָׁרַץ אַרְצָם צְפַרְדְּעִים בְּחַדְרֵי מַלְכֵיהֶם׃ 

R. Samson Raphael Hirsch adds that had the tzfardea been crocodiles, no Egyptians would have survived that plague.

So how should the phrase "destroy them" in Tehillim 78 be understood? Daat Mikra on the verse suggests that "destroy them" applies to the arov [perhaps wild animals] and the tzfardea together. This is supported by the fact that the verb for destroy, שחת, appears in Shemot 8:20 in association with the arov. 

In the description of the plague, sometimes we find tzfardea in the singular, and other times in the plural - צְפַרְדְּעִים. In his commentary on Shemot 8:2, where the singular tzfardea is used, Rashi provides two explanations for this:

There was only one frog, but when they struck at it, it was split into many swarms. This is a Midrashic explanation. But as a literal explanation one must say that the swarm of the frogs is denoted by the singular form. 

He goes on to cite Shemot 8:14, which refers to lice in the singular, also meaning a swarm of lice. Chizkuni adds that we also find a group of snakes referred to in the singular in Bamidbar 21:7.

Further reading:

• "The Frog was a Crocodile" by Prof. Daniel Sperber
• TZEFARDE’A: FROGS OR CROCODILES? by by Rabbi Dr. Natan Slifkin (republished more recently here)
• צפרדע וקרפדה by the Academy of the Hebrew Language

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