marshmallow

Lag B'Omer was a few days ago, but we're still talking about requirements for a bonfire. And as my kids will testify, you can't have a bonfire without marshmallows. But did you know that marshmallow may have a Hebrew origin?

The Maven's Word of the Day provides the following etymology of the word "marshmallow":

Marshmallow is one of those words that seems as if it should have a really interesting etymology, but is in truth rather mundane.

A mallow is a type of shrub. It is a member of the mallow family, which also includes hibiscus, okra, cotton, and some other plants. A marsh mallow, as you are probably about to guess, is a variety of mallow that lives in marshy places. Althaea officinalis, if you're keeping track.

Marshmallow is a confection made from the root of the marsh mallow (or, more often nowadays, from a bunch of unpleasant artificial sweeteners, flavorings, and thickeners)

From the mallow plant we also get the word "mauve". Take Our Word For It also discusses the marshmallow, and writes:

It may surprise some to see that marsh-mallow occurs naturally and is not that unholy amalgam of nutrasweet and styrofoam without which no camp-fire would be complete. In fact, it is a species of mallow plant which grows near salt marshes. This marsh-mallow has mauve flowers but this should not surprise us as mauve means (in French) "the color of a mallow flower" (from the Latin malva "mallow").

At least one more English word gets its name from the mallow plant - the mineral malachite. The Online Etymology Dictionary provides this etymology:

1398, from L. molochitis, from Gk. molochitis lithos "mallow stone," from molokhe "mallow;" the mineral traditionally so called from resemblance of its color to that of the leaves of the mallow plant.

So how is the word "mallow" derived from Hebrew? Klein, in his CEDEL, writes the following:

mallow, n., name of a plant. -- ME. malwe, fr. OE. mealwe, fr. L. malva, which, together with Gk. malache , of s.m., is borrowed fr. Heb. mallua h , 'mallow' (Job 30:4), derivative of melah, 'salt'; cp. Aram. milha, Syr. melha, Arab. milh, Akad. milu, 'salt'. (See H. Lewy, Die semitischen Fremdworter im Griechischen, 31 f., and Immanuel Low , Flora der Juden, I 227 ff. and 242 ff.) Cp. malachite, malvacious, mauve. Cp. also Malaga.

So according to Klein, we can connect the mallow in marshmallow to the Hebrew word מלח melach - salt. And his mention of Malaga? This is a port city in Southern Spain, who according to this travel guide:

Málaga, just like the other towns on the Costa del Sol, was settled by Phoenicians in ancient times, around the 7th to 8th century BC. Records indicate that the area was originally named "Malaka" from the Phoenician word for "salt." Because of the area's proximity to the sea, it became an important fishing center. Fish was salted and served as a staple food source for the local inhabitants. This is also the main reason behind the town's original name.

The American Heritage Dictionary also connects mallow to melach, although I should mention that some say that the word derives from "the Greek malake/maluke 'to soften'".

I've never tried a marshmallow made from an actual marsh mallow - I'd love to try. Probably healthier, and less kashrut problems. I just hope they're sweet, not salty...

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shipud

Yesterday was Lag B'Omer, and of course we had a bonfire. Let's look at some of the foods eaten at a bonfire. We've already talked about naknik, so let's talk about another word - shipud שיפוד - "skewer". We find the word in the Talmud as שפוד shapud (or shefod or shefud) with basically the same meaning - "spit for roasting meat". A derivative is the verb שפד - "to put on a spit".

Everyone seems to agree that the word derives from the Greek spodos (no one suggests a connection to "spit" in English - it has a different etymology.) . Klein writes that the word is "borrowed from the Greek spodos (spit for roasting meat.)". Steinsaltz (Avoda Zara 75b) gives the same definition of the Greek word.

However, all the sources I've found online discussing the Greek word give it a different meaning: "ashes". For example, here is the etymology of the mineral spodumene:

French spodumène, from German Spodumen, from Greek spodoumenos, present participle of spodousthai, to be burned to ashes, from spodos, wood ashes (because the mineral becomes ash gray when exposed to air).

(Here are some more words deriving from spodos - always meaning "ashes.")

So what's happening here? Ben-Yehuda does mention a theory that perhaps the word came from some language other than Greek, for Greek does not have the "sh" sound, and had it been from Greek it should have been spelled ספוד. But he does start by saying the word derives from spodos, and doesn't give any indication that spodos meant "ashes".

So while both ashes and skewers can be found at a bonfire, I'd still like to know where exactly the word שפוד came from. If it's Greek to you, please let me know...

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naknik

At our Thanksgiving dinner last night, our host served hot dogs (in addition to turkey) according to his family custom. The Hebrew word for hot dog is naknikiya נקניקיה , based on the word for sausage - naknik נקניק . (Alcalay has naknikit נקניקית for hot dog, and naknikiya as a "sausage shop" - but I've never heard either here.) This article states that the difference between naknik and naknikiya is that naknik is fully cooked and doesn't need refrigeration whereas a naknikiya does need refrigeration and is cooked before serving.

Klein gives the following etymology for naknik:

Coined by Eliezer ben Yehudah (1858-1922), from Aramaic נוקניקה ( = a kind of sausage), which is borrowed from Late Greek loukanika, from Latin lucanica (= a kind of sausage invented by the Lucanians), from Lucanicus (= Lucanian), from Lucani (the Lucanians), a people in Lower Italy.

The one example of nukanika in the Rabbinic literature that I was able to find is in Yerushalmi Shekalim, Chapter 7:

נוקניקה אשתכח בכנישתא דבולי אתא עובדא קומי רבי ירמיה אמר יתחכמון סקורייא עבידתהון

Some commentaries translate this as follows:

A bottle of wine was found in a synagogue in Buli. The case came before Rabbi Yirmiya, and he said let them identify the bottle by the color.

This reading seems to influenced by the previous sentence, which also deals with bottles of wine, and also an assumed connection between נוקניקה and קנקן (bottle).

However, Jastrow identifies nukanika as sausage, and Sokoloff, DJPA, s.v סיקייר translates the section like this:

A sausage was found in the synagogue. The case came before R. Yeremiya. He said - let the sausage makers (Latin insiciarius) recognize their product.

(In addition to lucanica, isicia was another word for sausage in Latin.)

Naknik still has culinary cousins in the Italian lucanica and the Greek loukanika (but naknik is generally more kosher...)

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keshet

Yesterday we discussed chetz חץ - arrow, so today we'll discuss keshet קשת - bow. The word also can mean arch and arc, and a kashat קשת is a bowman or archer. Steinberg, as we've seen in the past, claims that קשת comes from an earlier two-letter root קש, which means "strong and taut", and appears in other words like kashe קשה - hard, and kashuach קשוח - "rigid, cruel".

However, Kutscher takes a slightly different approach. Similar to his explanation of the word delet, he writes that keshet actually has only two letters in its root - only the letters קש are radical. He claims that in Hebrew the tav serves to make the word feminine, but in Arabic a vowel was added to give the root three letters - קוס kaus. We find this root in the names of stars composing the constellation Sagittarius - the Archer: Kaus Media, Kaus Borealis, Kaus Australis.

Aramaic followed a path similar to Hebrew. We find that קשת means "to shoot an arrow" - e.g. the Targum to Yechezkel 21:26. But we also find a slightly different form: קשט, with a tet instead of a tav. An example can be found in Yerushalmi Taanit 69b, and perhaps in Tehillim 60:6.

But we are also familiar with the root קשט having another meaning: truth. We find this meaning in Hebrew once in the Bible, in Mishlei 22:21. But it is very common in Aramaic. Is there any connection between the two meanings?

Jastrow provides one possible explanation. He writes that the original meaning of קשט was "to be straight, strong", and it developed to "to go in a straight line, to shoot forth". He also gives "straightness" as a synonym for "truth".

Steinberg has a somewhat different approach. He writes that the basic meaning of קשט is "to be prepared". An arrow is made ready, drawn in a bow. In Hebrew we find the word nachon נכון - meaning "prepared" and also "correct", and from here "truth". He gives the example from Shabbat 153a - where the guests for a meal prepared themselves: שקישטו את עצמן לסעודה.

It would seem that from this sense of "to prepare", "to arrange (according to Klein)", we get the more modern sense of לקשט meaning "to decorate" and kishut קישוט meaning decoration.

Klein writes that the word for jewelry - תכשיט tachshit - is "a doublet of תקשיט" and also originally meant "decoration".

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tapuach

Here's something that even new speakers of Hebrew should know. Tapuach תפוח = apple. Simple, right? Well, if you're a regular reader of Balashon, you should know that nothing's simple. (Or at least what I choose to write about.)

The fruit known as tapuach appears a few times in the Tanach, mostly in Shir HaShirim. Klein writes of the word's origin:

According to most lexicographers a derivative of base נפח (= to blow; to scent), and properly meaning 'the scenting fruit'. However, it is more probable that תפוח derives from תפח ( = to swell, to become or be round).

Amos Chacham in Daat Mikra on Shir HaShirim (2:3) identifies tapuach as Pirus malus - what we consider an apple today. However, there are other opinions. Harold N. and Alma L. Moldenke wrote in their book "Plants of the Bible":

The identity of the apple has perplexed scholars for years. According to the authors, the Hebrew word used is tapuach. "The apple tree of the Scriptures was a tree which afforded a pleasant shade. Its fruit was enticing to the sight, sweet to the taste, imparting fragrance, with restorative properties, and of a golden color, borne amid silvery leaves," they say.

Many scholars, they continue, have argued in favor of the common apple, Malus pumila. But most botanists agree that it is not native to the Holy Land. It was only comparatively recently that the "poor wild fruits of the common apple have been so improved by selection and cultivation as to bring them to a form which would fit the description in the Biblical quotations," the Moldenkes write.

Other writers have supposed the "apples of gold" were oranges, Citrus sinensis. But the fruit is native to China. The Seville orange, Citrus vulgaris, also suggested by some, is a native of eastern India, not introduced into the Holy Land until 1000 C.E., the authors add.

Other plants that don't meet the criteria include the citron, Citrus medica and the quince, Cydonia oblonga. Neither is "sweet to the taste."

The Moldenkes conclude the only fruit that meets all the requirements is the apricot, Prunus armeniaca. With the exception of the fig, it is the most abundant in the Holy Land, referring to Canon Tristam's "Natural History of the Bible." Tristam maintains the plant, originally from Armenia, was introduced to the Holy Land around the time of Noah (about 2950 BCE)."The apricot is a round-headed, reddish-barked tree growing to 30 feet tall," write the Moldenkes.

And what of all the discussion of the identity of the "Forbidden Fruit" in the Garden of Eden? In English it is generally translated as an apple, but while Jewish tradition gives a number of possible names for the fruit, tapuach isn't one of them. There are those that try to reconcile this by pointing out that one of the Rabbinic traditions claims that the forbidden fruit was an etrog, and that Tosfot (Shabbat 88a) quotes the Targum on Shir HaShirim as translating tapuach as etrog. But as Moldenke points out, the etrog isn't sweet.

But all this effort is unnecessary. The original meaning of the English word apple was "a generic term for all fruit, other than berries but including nuts, as late as 17c., hence its use for the unnamed 'fruit of the forbidden tree' in Genesis". So the translation as an apple was correct - it just didn't mean tapuach.

In French, there was a similar development, where pomme once meant general fruit and now means apple. From here arose the French term for potato - pomme de terre, meaning "earth apple". German has a similar word for potato - erdapfel. From the French and German terms arose the Hebrew word for potato - תפוח אדמה tapuach adama.

In the 1940's Yitzchak Avi-Neri coined the modern Hebrew word for orange - tapuz תפוז, an acronym of "tapuach zahav" תפוח זהב - "golden apple". (Tapuchei zahav actually appears in Mishlei 25:11, but is referring to a kind of jewelry.)

Kutscher describes the development of the various "tapuach" terms here:

A similar method of word formation is the fusion of two words in one. Tapuakh-zhav (lit. "golden apple" - "orange") has become tapuz. There is also tapuakh-adama (lit. "ground-apple" a loan-translation of the German Erdapfel). These two have given rise to another compound tapuakh-etz (lit. "tree-apple") - a tautologous form, as in the Bible tapuakh plain and simple, means "apple." But in Israel a generation ago tapukhim were rare and expensive, while the other two varities were plentiful. So Hebrew speakers influenced by the tapukhei-zhav and tapukhei-adama coined tapukhei-etz to specify what they were referring to.

Which leads me to a funny story. On a kibbutz I was on a number of years ago, they had the foreign volunteers work in the dining hall. One of their tasks was to write a note describing the main course on the food cart. This day the main course was potato burekas. The volunteer, who had come to the kibbutz to learn Hebrew, mistakenly wrote בורקס תפוח - burekas tapuach - "apple burekas". A kibbutz member corrected her and told her that she should write tapuach adama - potato. So she corrected the sign to read בורקס אדמה - burekas adama -earth/soil burkeas...

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kumzits

It is very common around the Lag B'Omer bonfire to have a sing-along called a kumzits (also spelled kumzitz or kumsitz). As this article describes, kumzits is an unusual word. On the one hand, it is widely known that the origin is from Yiddish for "come [and] sit". However, the word does not appear in Yiddish dictionaries. Why is that?

It turns out that kumzits is a Yiddish word that exists only in Hebrew. It was adopted by the early pioneers in Israel, despite the establishments opposition to use of Yiddish words. Hebrew replacements were suggested such as shevna שבנא - "please sit" and the Talmudic tozig טוזיג. But nothing ever managed to displace kumzits from its place beside the fire.

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sefira

One of the customs during the period known as sefirat ha'omer - ספירת העומר - is not to get a haircut - להסתפר - l'histaper. Is there an etymological connection between the two terms that share the same three letters in their root - ספר?

Jastrow believes that they do, while Klein maintains that they do not. Let's look at various Hebrew words with the root ספר SFR - and see where from where they derive:

1) Throughout the Bible, the root ספר means "to count, number, to recount, tell, narrate". From this root come such basic words as sefer - book, sofer - scribe, mispar - number and sippur - story. Jastrow explains the development of the word as "to cut, to mark, -> to write, to count". We'll see the significance of that order in the following paragraphs. Klein however gives a different explanation. He writes that sefer comes from the Akkadian shipru, meaning letter, which in turn comes from shaparu, meaning "to send." This Semitic root is related to the Arabic word safar - journey, which later gave the Swahili word safari.

2) As I mentioned before, the root ספר can also mean "to cut". Tisporet תספורת - haircut, and misparaim מספריים - scissors are derivatives. Naturally, this fits in rather well with Jastrow's theory above, but Klein says it is related to the word shafra(h) - meaning "large knife, blade of a sword" (he doesn't say which Semitic language.)

3) The word sfar in Hebrew means border, frontier. Jastrow connects it with the previous terms by pointing out that a boundary is marked. (However, he also includes a definition of צפירה as "border", and certainly the tsade and samech could have switched place over time.) Klein says it is related to the Akkadian supuru, meaning "wall, fence" and the Aramaic ספרא meaning "shore".

4) The kabbalistic term "sefira" (meaning "the ten creative divine forces") does not derive from Hebrew, but rather from the Greek sphaira, meaning "ball, globe", and besides giving the English word sphere, is also the second element of such words as atmosphere and stratosphere.

5) In English the noun "super" usually refers to a superintendent of an apartment building, but in Hebrew the noun סופר - super indicates a supermarket.

6) Lastly, the English words cipher and zero derive from from an Arabic root - safira - meaning "void" or "empty". From here it would appear that there is no connection from that root to an existing Hebrew word, but maybe one of the readers here has an idea?

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