ba'ar, bi'er and be'ir

 A reader asked about the origin of the biblical word be'ir בעיר, meaning "cattle" or "domesticated animals." Let's take a look.

It appears only six times in the Tanach: Bereshit 45:17; Shemot 22:4; Bamidbar 20:4,8,11, and Tehilim 78:48. In each case it refers to animals owned by humans. One verse in particular (Shemot 22:4) can perhaps shed light on where the word comes from:

כִּי יַבְעֶר־אִישׁ שָׂדֶה אוֹ־כֶרֶם וְשִׁלַּח אֶת־בעירה [בְּעִירוֹ] וּבִעֵר בִּשְׂדֵה אַחֵר מֵיטַב שָׂדֵהוּ וּמֵיטַב כַּרְמוֹ יְשַׁלֵּם׃ 

When a man lets his livestock loose to graze in another’s land, and so allows a field or a vineyard to be grazed bare, he must make restitution for the impairment of that field or vineyard. 

Be'ir is translated here as "livestock." But in addition to be'ir we also have the verb בער bi'er, rendered here as "graze." In and of itself, that's not so surprising - animals do graze, and verbs and nouns are often related. The question is did the noun be'ir come from the verb בער, or did the verb provide us with the noun?  I haven't found a conclusive answer to that question. Some sources say that the noun is the source (like Klein), others say the verb is the source (like Gesenius), and a surprising number aren't really sure (BDB, Ben Yehuda, Kaddari.)

One thing that is clear is that the verb בער has more than one meaning. In fact, another meaning is found in the very next verse!

כִּי־תֵצֵא אֵשׁ וּמָצְאָה קֹצִים וְנֶאֱכַל גָּדִישׁ אוֹ הַקָּמָה אוֹ הַשָּׂדֶה שַׁלֵּם יְשַׁלֵּם הַמַּבְעִר אֶת־הַבְּעֵרָה׃ 

When a fire is started and spreads to thorns, so that stacked, standing, or growing grain is consumed, he who started the fire must make restitution. (Shemot 22:5)

In this verse, בער means "to start a fire," and we also find the noun b'erah בערה - "burning, fire." The verbs in each verse have very different meanings (aside from some ancient Aramaic translations suggest that 22:4 is also talking about fire, not grazing). And as Cassuto put it in his commentary on Shemot, "there is clearly noticeable here a word-play in the use of the verb בער ba'ar in two different senses ['graze' and 'burn'] and in its proximity to the substantive בעיר be'ir ['cattle', 'beast']."

We've discussed the the possibility of biblical word play before, most famously in my post about ish and isha. But while that theory is subject to some controversy, these two verses make it very clear that the Torah is willing to use two words in proximity, with similar spellings but different meanings, even though it might lead to some confusion. 

The verb בער has a number of meanings aside from "burn" (or "kindle, light") and "graze." It can also mean "to remove, eliminate, destroy." Which meaning is used in the phrase bi'ur chametz ביעור חמץ? Is it the removal of chametz from the home before Pesach, or the burning of that chametz? At first glance it would seem that this is the source of the debate in the mishna:

 רַבִּי יְהוּדָה אוֹמֵר, אֵין בִּעוּר חָמֵץ אֶלָּא שְׂרֵפָה. וַחֲכָמִים אוֹמְרִים, אַף מְפָרֵר וְזוֹרֶה לָרוּחַ אוֹ מַטִּיל לַיָּם:

  Rabbi Judah says: there is no removal of chametz except by burning; But the sages say: he may also crumble it and throw it to the wind or cast it into the sea. (Pesachim 2:1)

However, the halacha is that the chametz can be removed by any method, and the commentaries say that the disagreement between Rabbi Judah and the Sages is only about the ideal method to destroy the chametz. And while the Torah doesn't mention bi'ur in connection with chametz, it does mention removing the consecrated ma'aser food by using the verb בער (Devarim 26:13-14). In that case, it clearly means "removal", not "burning."

As I mentioned above, the linguists aren't certain about the origins and connections between the various meanings of בער. One possible line that runs between all of them is the sense of "consume," which could apply to both the grazing of animals and the burning of fire, and then be extended metaphorically to all removal or destruction.

One other meaning of בער is "to be brutish or foolish." This is actually related to the words we just discussed. It comes from be'ir, and so would literally mean "to act like an animal." The adjective ba'ar בַּֽעַר means "foolish, ignorant." As Philologos points out here, ba'ar is unrelated to both the Hebrew bur בור - "ignoramus" (connected to bar בר, which we discussed here) and the English "boor" (which also aren't related to each other.)

 

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nachash, nichush and nechoshet

Is there any connection between the Hebrew words nachash נחש - "snake", nichush ניחוש - "guess" and nechoshet נחושת - "copper"? They all appear to have the same root. However, it doesn't appear very likely that they are connected with each other. Let's take a closer look.

Nachash is the biblical word for snake, and Klein doesn't say much about its etymology other than that it is likely related to the Arabic word for serpent - "hanash". This is clearly an example of metathesis, but he doesn't say which form is likely the original form of the word. Horowitz, in How the Hebrew Language Grew, provides the following anecdote:

The little children were playing at the edge of the clearing in front of their house. Suddenly their mother, horror struck, saw a snake near them, with lifted head, poised to strike. She hissed out to them sharply the warning sound חש (chash) imitating the very hiss of the snake. The children heard. They understood and ran to safety.

From this warning syllable chash arose the Hebrew word for snake nachash.

It's a bit fanciful, but I think it's reasonable to claim that nachash might have onomatopoeic origins. Other words ending in -chash also relate to sounds, like lachash לחש - "whisper"and rachash רחש - "rustle".

Nichush (and the verb נחש) did not originally mean "guess". In biblical Hebrew it meant "divination" and was associated with magical practices. Only in modern Hebrew was it "secularized" to mean "guess." Klein points out that it is cognate with the Arabic nahisa and nahusa   - "was unlucky". The Arabic form entered Hebrew slang as nachs נחס - "unlucky" or "bad".

Regarding the etymology, Horowitz does connect nichush to nachash, saying that the divination was apparently done with snakes. However, Stahl, Klein and Kaddari all say that nichush is more likely related to lachash, since the diviners would whisper when reciting their incantations.  The BDB mentions a theory that nichush derives from nachash, but rejects it because Aramaic has nichush, but does not have nachash meaning snake.

Our last term is nechoshet which Klein translates as brass or copper (BDB adds bronze), and while he provides cognates in a number of other Semitic languages, he doesn't connect it to either nachash or nichush. One derivative of that word is nachush נחוש, which meant "brazen" in Biblical Hebrew, in the same way that the English word brazen derives from brass:

Old English bræsen "of brass," from bræs "brass" + -en. The figurative sense of "hardened in effrontery" is 1570s (in brazen-face), perhaps suggesting a face unable to show shame.

In modern Hebrew the word nachush does not always have the negative connotation, and instead can also mean "decisive, firm, steadfast."

If you're wondering about the phrase נחש נחושת - nachash nechoshet found in Bamidbar 21:9, referring to a "copper snake", please take a look at my post from a few years ago about ish and isha. What we have here is a play on words, a pun - not any proof of an etymological connection.

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ish and isha

The first words the Torah quotes Adam as saying appear right after his wife was created. He gives her a name, but also mentions a connection between his name and hers:

וַיֹּאמֶר, הָאָדָם, זֹאת הַפַּעַם עֶצֶם מֵעֲצָמַי, וּבָשָׂר מִבְּשָׂרִי; לְזֹאת יִקָּרֵא אִשָּׁה, כִּי מֵאִישׁ לֻקְחָה-זֹּאת.

Then the man said, "This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called Woman (isha) for from man (ish) she was taken". (Bereshit 2:23)

As you might imagine, I love the idea that the first recorded human sentence include an etymology! Ibn Ezra says that the words ish איש and isha אשה are related, and Rashi goes even further. Based on the midrash in Bereshit Rabba (18:4), he says that from this verse we learn that the world was created in Hebrew!

However, there are a few difficulties with what we've said so far. First of all, almost all modern linguists say that ish and isha aren't related. Ish comes from the root אוש, meaning strength (the related root אשש means "to strengthen"), and isha derives from אנש, meaning weak. (The common plural of both - anashim אנשים - "men" and nashim - נשים - "women" also derive from אנש). Aside from the fact that the Torah mentions them together, it might seem difficult to believe that they aren't from the same root. We see the letter heh added as a feminine suffix in many words. Why shouldn't we accept what appears to be the obvious etymology here as well?

Well, first of all, we should be careful of "obvious" etymologies. I've warned a number of times of the danger of assuming that words in English and Hebrew that have similar sounds and meanings are related. But we need to be just as careful when it comes to words in the same language. My friend Mike Gerver has a list of false cognates in English, with pairs of words that most people would find it hard to believe aren't from the same root: for example, pull and pulley, isle and island. I would add to this list one very relevant to our topic: male and female!

Secondly, it's important to note the the woman is receiving a name here. We see many times that the etymology of names given in the Torah does not match up exactly with the linguistic etymologies. For example, the Torah connects the name Noach נח with the root נחם, even though the two aren't connected. (For a good analysis of this phenomenon, read this post on Parshablog.)

But perhaps most significantly, there's a grammatical problem here as well. The word isha has a dagesh in the shin. Ibn Ezra says this is to distinguish it from the homonym ishah -"her husband." Modern linguists, however, have shown that this dagesh is due to the "dropped nun" phenomenon (see other examples here.) In addition, the shin in ish and the shin in isha aren't really cognate. Horowitz writes (page 107):

Strange and unbelievable as it seems the word אשה has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the word איש. In אשה in the first place a nun has fallen out; the word is really אנשה (insha). The plural נשים gives some hint of that. The really important fact, though, is that the shin of אשה is really a tav. In Aramaic the word for woman is either אתא or more commonly אתתא.

Klein points out that there is an Aramaic form אנתתא, as well as the Arabic אנתת, which show both the dropped nun and the tav instead of shin.

A number of modern Jewish commentaries deal with the apparent conflict between the verse in Bereshit and the currently accepted etymologies. Sarna writes in the JPS Genesis:

Hebrew 'ishah ... 'ish, though actually derived from distinct and unrelated stems, are here associated through folk etymology by virtue of assonance.

Kil in the Daat Mikra in a footnote (with no apologetics) writes that ish is from אוש and isha is from אשש, whereas the plural of both comes from אנש. Cassuto makes a similar comment, but has isha coming from the root אנת / אנש as we've mentioned above.

Probably the earliest "modern" commentator that I could find who dealt with the issue was Shadal. He wrote:

Moses recorded these words as they were pronounced in his time, even though ishah was not actually derived from ish, but rather from enash, which became enesh (as gevar became gever), yielding the plural anashim, as well as the feminine form inshah, which became ishah. The word ish, however, has been preserved in its original form.

Now while I'm generally willing to explore any resource in order to find the history of words on this site, I was a little nervous going forward here. I needed to present an "unbelievable" etymology, and it seems to contradict a verse in the Torah! And from conversations with friends, I had the feeling that my "modern" commentators weren't going to cut it.

So I was relieved when I found that the Radak in his Sefer HaShorashim (entry אנש) wrote that:

ואפשר שתהיה אשה מזה השרש והדגש לחסרון הנו"ן והראוי אנשה

"And it is possible that isha is from this root (אנש) and the dagesh is due to the missing nun, and it is properly אנשה"

So we have some early grammatical proof. (By the way, I'm not sure if the Radak was the first one to come up with the אנשה theory - it was just the earliest I could find. If anyone has any other sources, I'd be glad to see them.) However, it doesn't entirely satisfy the issue. Rashi's quote from the midrash above still stands - aren't we supposed to learn something about the role of Hebrew from this verse?

Let's look a little closer at what Rashi wrote:

לשון נופל על לשון. מכאן שנברא העולם בלשון הקודש

Most of the English translations of Rashi imply that he's referring to an etymological connection between ish and isha. For example, this site translates it as:

[The words איש and אשה ] have the same root. From this [we derive] that the world was created with the Holy Tongue.

Another site has a similar translation:

One expression coincides with the other [i. e., the words אִישׁ and words אִשָּׁה have the same root]. From here is derived that the world was created with the Holy Tongue.

However, these are not precise translations of Rashi's language. He does not say that the words are from the root - he says "lashon nofel al lashon" - which means a play on words or a pun (literally "one expression falls on another expression"). We find this term in a related midrash in Bereshit Rabba (31:8). The midrash notes that God told Moshe to make a seraph (Bamidbar 21:8). Moshe, however, makes a copper snake - a נחש נחושת - nachash nechoshet (21:9). His reason for doing so was that this was lashon nofel al lashon - the words nachash and nechoshet resemble each other. And here too, the midrash learns from this that the world was created in Hebrew.

I think anyone reading that midrash alone would not assume that nachash and nechoshet are related etymologically (they're not, by the way, but that's for a different post). So perhaps here too, we don't need to assume that ish and isha are related etymologically by virtue of them being lashon nofel al lashon.

I think this point was well explained by Rabbi Yitzchak Arama, author of Akedat Yitzhak (chapter 8). He writes there that ish and isha do not have the same root. He connects ish to strength, but curiously does not present the etymology of isha. He distinguishes ish and isha from other animals where the female is marked by a heh suffix, such as par פר -"bull" and parah פרה - "cow", keves כבש -"lamb" and kivsa כבשה - "ewe", and more. (This is contrast to the Chizkuni on 2:23 who writes that humans are the only species that the terms for male and female come from the same root. How he missed the numerous examples where it does occur, I don't know.)

He then points out something very important about the concept of lashon nofel al lashon. He quotes the midrash that Rashi quoted above, and writes:

ומההכרח להיות כוונתם ז"ל מה שאמרנו שאל"כ מאי קאמרי שהוא לשון נופל על לשון והלא לשון אחד ממש הוא כמו פר ופרה כבש וכבשה

"And this must have been their intention (when they wrote the midrash), as we said (that the words come from different roots). For if not, then what does it mean, 'lashon nofel al lashon' - for is it only one lashon (expression), like par and parah, keves and kivsa?"

So from the Akedat Yitzhak's reading (which I think makes a lot of sense), the midrash and Rashi actually support the idea that ish and isha aren't etymologically related.

One other thing bothered me about the midrash. Not only does it say that the world was created in Hebrew, but it uses the proof from the verse that the Torah was given in Hebrew:

From here you learn that the Torah was given in Hebrew. R. Pinchas and R. Chilkiya in the name of R. Simon: Just as the Torah was given in Hebrew, so too was the world created in Hebrew. Have you ever heard gini ginia, anthrope anthropia, gavra gavreta? Rather ish and isha. Why so? For they are similar sounding words (lashon nofel al lashon).

The midrash is showing how in Greek and Aramaic the words for male and female are not related at all - there are no such words in Greek as gini and anthropia, nor gavreta in Aramaic. (This "proof" doesn't work as well in English, were we have the related "man" and "woman", but it does allow the English translation of Bereshit 2:23 to duplicate the assonance.)

But why would anyone even assume that the Torah was written in another language? I think we need to pay attention to the linguistic pluralism facing the Jews in the land of Israel at the time of the midrash (R' Simon lived in 3rd century Lod.) Both Greek and Aramaic were seriously challenging Hebrew not just as the vernacular, but for religious significance as well. The Aramaic and Greek translations of the Torah were very popular, and we find numerous permissions in Jewish law to pray in other languages. An example of just how far this trend had progressed can be found in the following midrash (Sifrei Devarim 343):

"ויאמר, ה' מסיני בא" (דברים לג, ב) - כשנגלה הקדוש ברוך הוא ליתן תורה לישראל, לא בלשון אחד נגלה, אלא בארבעה לשונות:
"ויאמר, ה' מסיני בא" - זה לשון עברי.
"וזרח משעיר למו" - זה לשון רומי [=לטינית].
"הופיע מהר פארן" - זה לשון ערבי.
"ואתה מרבבות קדש" - זה לשון ארמי.

"The Lord came from Sinai; He shone upon them from Seir; He appeared from Mount Paran; and came from Rivevot Kodesh" (Devarim 33:2)
When the Holy One gave the Torah to Israel, he didn't reveal himself in one language, but in four:
"The Lord came from Sinai" - this is Hebrew.
"He shone upon them from Seir" - this is Roman (Seir is Edom, identified with Rome. This is likely Latin, although some say that it refers to Greek.)
"He appeared from Mount Paran" - this is Arabic (Yishmael lived in Paran, from whom the Arabs are descended)
"And came from Rivevot Kodesh" - this is Aramaic (the word for came, ata, is Aramaic)

It was against this background that R' Simon needed to point out that the Torah was given in Hebrew. I'm sure that most Jews of the time knew that Moshe didn't speak Aramaic or Greek. But the message here is that word play can really only be appreciated in the original language. Something is always lost in translation. Puns, despite them being the "lowest form of humor", are the inside jokes of language, allowing a real connection between writer and reader.

I grew up in a family where we constantly made puns - some of them real groaners. And I still appreciate them today - you've seen me quote the comic strip "Pearls Before Swine". So as hard as it is for me to give up the first quoted sentence by a human as an etymology, I'm even more thrilled to see it was a form of a pun...

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saraf

In this weeks parasha (Chukat) we see that as a punishment God sends: הַנְּחָשִׁים הַשְּׂרָפִים - the serafim snakes (Bamidbar 21:6). What is being referred to here?

According to Ibn Ezra and others, serafim is an adjective for the nahashim (snakes). As Rashi explains, they burn שורף - soref - with their venom. However, we eventually see the saraf taking its place as a noun. First, in the same story where it is placed on a banner. Yeshayahu (14:29, 30:6) refers to a שרף מועפף - a flying saraf (even the classic commentaries say that the snake would jump as if it was flying.) And apparently from the imagery of a flying snake, we get the famous description of the Seraphim angels (Yeshayahu 6:2,6) with their six wings.

The root שרף has a number of related roots, all following the same pattern: a sibilant consonant, followed by resh, followed by a labial consonant. And so we have:

• צרב - to burn, to scorch. From here we get the word צרבת - heartburn, and the verb לצרוב is used to describe "burning" CDs and DVDs.
• שרב - to glow, be parched, as in sharav - burning heat (I discussed the similar hamsin here).
• צרם - Steinberg adds this root, which is understood as originally "to cut", "to grate (on the ears).
• צרף - to smelt, to refine, and later to attach, to join and to change money. Klein says that the word literally means "to purify by burning." From here we get the word tzrif צריף - meaning according to Klein "a cone shaped hut, literally 'that which is joined together'." Today it is used to describe a bunk - in camp, or in the army.

Steinberg writes that the city Tzarfat צרפת - originally referring to a Phoenician town, but later associated with France - got its name from the glass manufacturing which developed in the region.
Also from צרף we get the English word "silver":

Middle English, from Old English siolfor, seolfor, probably ultimately from Akkadian sarpu, refined silver, verbal adj. of sarapu, to smelt, refine.

Klein points out that the root רצף - "to make continuous" is a metathesis of צרף, the source of ritzpa רצפה - floor. A similar word is the noun רצף retzef - meaning "burning coal". Stahl connects retzef with reshef רשף - "flame"; perhaps this is another metathesis of the previous pattern of "burning" verbs.
Another meaning of שרף is "to absorb, sip, suck, quaff". While Klein does not connect the two meanings, Jastrow associates "sip and absorb" with "consume and burn". Interestingly, Jastrow translates the midrash on נחשים שרפים (Bamidbar Rabba 19:22) which states: השרפים ששורפים את הנפש: "they are called burning serpents, because they burn the life out (with thirst)."
As far as this second meaning, Klein writes that "several scholars connect this base with Arab. sharib (= he drank), sharab (= drink, beverage)." From this root we get a number of English words:

• sherbet, sorbet - 1603, zerbet, "drink made from diluted fruit juice and sugar," from Turk. serbet, from Pers. sharbat, from Arabic sharba(t) "a drink," from shariba "he drank."
• syrup - 1392, from O.Fr. sirop (13c.), and perhaps from It. siroppo, both from Arabic sharab "beverage, wine," lit. "something drunk," from verb shariba "he drank"
• shrub - A beverage made from fruit juice, sugar, and a liquor such as rum or brandy. From Arabic surb, a drink, from sariba, to drink

Lastly, is there a connection between saraf and the English "serpent"? In the entry for שרף meaning "drink", Klein writes "cp. also 'serpent' in my CEDEL and words referred to in that entry."
However, in the CEDEL he lists serpent as coming from Latin serpens, which it says is probably the present participle of serpo, serpere, "to creep." No other serious source I could find connects the two words. I wrote to etymology maven Mike Gerver, and asked what he thought. This is his reply:

This is my guess. His remark about seeing the entry for "serpent" in CEDEL doesn't really make sense under שרף-ii, "to absorb," which is where it is printed. It would make more sense two entries down, under שרף-i (with kametz under the ש and the ר), "serpent." Probably his index cards got out of order (I've seen other places where this seems to have happened), and what he meant by that remark is that שרף meaning "serpent" might have been a loan from Latin or another Indo-European language, rather than deriving from שרף meaning "fiery angel." Or possibly he's saying that the "fiery angel" meaning might have derived from the "serpent" meaning (which itself was borrowed from Latin), rather than from שרף meaning "to burn." Or more likely, maybe he's just suggesting that שרף meaning "serpent" was influenced by Latin, even though the word is really the same as the word meaning "fiery angel." That's the only one of these possibilities that strikes me as reasonably likely.

Anyone else out there have any ideas?

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chitui

This week's parasha (Chukat) opens with a description of the procedure of purification from contamination by a corpse, most notably with the ashes of a red cow. It is interesting that one of the verbs mentioned in the process (Bamidbar 19:12) is yit'chata יתחטא - "he shall cleanse himself". There would seem to be a connection between yit'chata and chata חטא - "he sinned". But aren't those terms opposites?

In addition to the hitpael form found here, we find the piel form חיטא in other places in the Tanach. This too means to cleanse, and chitui חיטוי in modern Hebrew means a disinfectant. Again, what is the connection between chitui and chet חטא - sin?

We are familiar with such contradicting terms in English as well. They are called autoantonyms, or contronyms, meaning a homonym which is also an antonym. Some of them are just coincidences with unrelated etymologies such as cleave, meaning both "adhere" and "separate". But there are a number of words in English where the verb means to remove the noun. "To peel" means to remove the peel, "to pit" means to remove the pit, "to dust" means to remove dust, "to shell" - remove the shell, "to seed" - to remove the seeds.

According to Ruth Almagor-Ramon in the book Rega Shel Ivrit, Hebrew has the same phenomenon as well, in the piel form of some verbs, where it can mean "to remove". Shoresh שורש is a "root", להשתרש is "to take root" but לשרש is "to remove from the roots". The verb סקל means "he stoned, executed by stoning", but סיקל means "he freed from stones". Zanav זנב means "tail", but according to Klein, לזנב means "he routed the rear of an army, lit. "he cut off the tail."

And therefore we can understand the connection between chitui and chet, as an example of a contronym. The verb חיטא means "to free from sin, to cleanse from sin". Yit'chata - "he shall free himself (from sin, impurity)."

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tor

In this weeks parsha (Shlach) we see that God gives the command:

שְׁלַח-לְךָ אֲנָשִׁים, וְיָתֻרוּ אֶת-אֶרֶץ כְּנַעַן

What is the meaning of the verb תור? Milgrom translates it as "to scout":

Hebrew root t-w-r, "scout, seek out" (10:33, 15:39, Ezek 20:6); compare Akkadian taru, "turn around", that is, gather information but not necessarily of a military nature ... This verb contrasts with r-g-l, "spy out" (cf. Num 21:32; Josh 7:2, Judg 18:2). The Deuteronomic account (Deut 1:24) uses the verb "spy out" (cf. Josh 14:7)

As Milgrom points out, this non-military meaning also connects it to one of the last verses in the parsha:

וְלֹא-תָתוּרוּ אַחֲרֵי לְבַבְכֶם, וְאַחֲרֵי עֵינֵיכֶם, אֲשֶׁר-אַתֶּם זֹנִים, אַחֲרֵיהֶם

meaning "You should not seek out, follow, after your heart and your eyes".

As an aside, I had always thought that there was a connection between תור - "to scout" and tor תור - dove. The role of the dove in the story of Noach was essentially to scout out, and to return. But Klein writes that the origin of tor (dove) is:

Of imitative origin. cp. L. turtur (=turtledove), which is also imitative. Eng. turte (in the sense of 'turtledove') derives from the Old Eng. turtle, which is formed from the L. turtur with dissimilation of the second r into l.)

I still think there may be an associative connection, if not an etymological one.

The related, earlier meaning of תור as "turn about" (and there doesn't seem to be a connection between "turn" and tor) gives rise to more modern senses of tor as appointment and queue. (See here for the difference between תור and טור in this regard). It is also the root of the difficult to translate, but very familiar toranut תורנות - meaning duty by rotation.

The Hebrew word for tourist, תייר tayar, also derives from תור. However, this meaning is much more modern, and influenced by the English word "tourist". Kutscher writes that in Lashon Chachamim (Mishnaic Hebrew) tayar meant guide, as in Bava Kama 116b:
ואם שכרו (אנשי השיירה) תייר ההולך לפניהם
"If the caravan hired a guide to go before it"

Kutscher brings a story of a student who was unfamiliar with the original meaning of tayar, and was therefore very confused to hear Rashi called התייר הגדול hatayar hagadol...

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