meged, almond and armageddon

We've previously discussed the Hebrew word שקד shaked, meaning "almond." But what about the etymology of the word "almond" itself?

The Online Etymology Dictionary provides the following origin:

kernel of the fruit of the almond tree, c. 1300, from Old French almande, amande, earlier alemondle "almond," from Vulgar Latin *amendla, *amandula, from Latin amygdala (plural), from Greek amygdalos "an almond tree," a word of unknown origin, perhaps from Semitic. Late Old English had amygdales "almonds." 

This makes it cognate with the part of the brain responsible for emotions known as the amygdala. Here's the Online Etymology entry for amygdala:

part of the brain, from Latin amygdalum "almond" (which the brain parts resemble), from Greek amygdale "almond" (see almond). English also had amygdales "the tonsils" (early 15c.), from a secondary sense of the Latin word in Medieval Latin, a translation of Arabic al-lauzatani "the two tonsils," literally "the two almonds," so called by Arabic physicians for fancied resemblance.

The connection between almonds and tonsils exists in Hebrew as well - shaked can refer to both.

However, I'd like to return to the mention above that the Greek amygdalos may be "perhaps from Semitic." In Klein's CEDEL, he expands on this idea. In his entry for "almond" he writes:

…according to H. Lewy, Die semitischen Fremdwörter im Griechischen, pp. 25-26, [amygdalos] is borrowed from Hebrew meghedh El, 'divine fruit'.

The Hebrew word referred to here, meged מגד, is not a very common one in the Bible, only appearing eight times. However, those familiar with the Torah reading for Simchat Torah will certainly recognize it, as it repeats five times during Moshe's blessing of the tribes of Yosef (Devarim 33:13-16) . The word is variously translated as "sweetness," "best", or "bounty." Some say it means "blessing", particularly when comparing the parallel blessing Yaakov gave Yosef in Bereshit 49:25. 

Klein's etymology for meged is not much more precise:

מֶֽגֶד m.n. choice of things, excellence. [Related to Aram. מִגְדָּא (= fruit, something precious), Syr. מַגְדָּא (= fruit), Arab. majd (= glory, honor).] 

In any case, based on all the biblical appearances of the word, it always refers to good crops or fruits, and so the possibility that it eventually was borrowed by the Greeks for their word for the fruit of the prized almond tree should not be dismissed.

Klein mentioned the Arabic cognate, majd. That Arabic word is found in a number of names of people and places, One such place, familiar to Israelis, is the Arab town of Majd al-Krum in the Galilee. While the English Wikipedia page says that the name translates to "watch-house of the vineyard" (perhaps cognate with the Hebrew migdal מגדל - "tower"), the Hebrew entry translates the name as "glory of the vineyards", which makes it cognate with meged.

Yet there is another town in northern Israel, even more well known, which may derive from meged as well. This is the Biblical city of Megiddo מגידו. Megiddo appears 12 times in the Bible, once (Zecharia 12:11) as Megidon. While its etymology is debated, the Encyclopedia Mikrait suggests that it may come from meged due to the produce grown there.

The mountain of Megiddo was known in Hebrew as har Megido הר מגידו (or perhaps har Megidon), and this led to another familiar word in English - Armageddon:

"cataclysmic final conflict," 1811, figurative use of the place-name in Revelation xvi.16, site of the great and final conflict, from Hebrew Har Megiddon "Mount of Megiddo"

Today many are concerned about the environmental impact of almond growing. Let's hope that instead of leading to an armageddon, they continue to be the divine fruit of blessing that we've enjoyed for millennia. 

Tweet

maudlin and armageddon

The English word "maudlin" ultimately has a Hebrew origin. From The Online Etymology Dictionary's entry for maudlin:

c. 1600, "tearful," from Middle English fem. proper name Maudelen (early 14c.), from Magdalene (Old French Madelaine), woman's name, originally surname of Mary the repentant sinner forgiven by Jesus in Luke vii:37. In paintings, she often was shown weeping as a sign of repentance. Meaning "characterized by tearful sentimentality" is recorded by 1630s

And here is their entry for Magdalene:

fem. proper name, from Latin (Maria) Magdalena, from Greek Magdalene, literally "woman of Magdala," from Aramaic Maghdela, place on the Sea of Galilee, literally "tower."

Magdala was the name of a number of places in the Second Temple period (mentioned in both Jewish and Christian sources.) Later an Arab village, al-Majdal, preserved the name of Magdala, and in 1910, once again a Jewish town, in the same area, took up the name - Migdal.

The Aramaic Maghdela is cognate with the Hebrew migdal מגדל - "tower", and derives from the root גדל, meaning "great, large, tall", as in the word gadol גדול - "big".  There is another meaning of גדל - "twist, plait", and from here we get the synonym for tzitzit - gedilim גדילים in Devarim 22:12. Klein says they might be related, since twisting a cord makes it strong, i.e. great.

A different theory, mentioned in this entry in the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, says that the two meanings of גדל are not related, and in fact, suggests that migdal actually derives from degel דגל (originally meaning "to look"):

The natural identification of the word migdal as a miqtal construction from a root gdl is problematical because only Canaanite attests the root gdl in the meaning "be large, high" (cf. in contrast Arab. gadala, "twist or pull tightly, plait"), and because the context of several OT occurences (e..g Isa 5:2) does not suggest something large and high. Thus there is some reason to follow the suggest first articulated by William F. Albright that the word migdal arose through metathesis from midgal (cf. Akk. madgaltu, "watchtower, border post").

The same entry mentions that the word migdal (or migdol) was so frequent in place names in the region, that Herodotus (Histories 2:159) mistakenly describes the famous biblical Battle of Megiddo as taking place in Magdolus. The Christian Book of Revelation describes a future battle to take place at Har Megiddo - which in Greek became Armageddon.  Eventually, Armageddon took on the meaning of "a final conflict" or "the end of the world."

Zev Vilnay writes here that the place name Megiddo מגידו likely has the following origin: מגדו — מקום גדודים - "Megido - a place of troops (gedudim)". Others connect it to the word meged  מגד - "bounty" (of food).

So from the sad maudlin and the scary Armageddon, if we dig a little further, we find greatness and bounty. The optimism of etymology!

Tweet

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...

Tweet

dod

The Hebrew word for uncle is dod דוד (aunt is doda דודה). It is also a biblical word for lover. What's the connection between the two?

Klein suggests that the meaning uncle came first. He provides the following etymology:

Related to Syriac דדא (=uncle; beloved), Mandaic, Nabatean and Palmyrene dada (=father's brother), Arabic dad (=foster-father), dad (=play, game, joke), Akkadian dadu (=beloved child). All these words probably derive from infants' babbling 'dad'.

"Dad" as a word deriving from baby talk can also be found in English:

recorded from 1500, but probably much older, from child's speech, nearly universal and probably prehistoric (cf. Welsh tad, Ir. daid, Czech, L., Gk. tata, Lith. tete, Skt.
tatah all of the same meaning).

Horowitz (pg. 50) offers a similar origin, although he says lover preceded uncle:

Dod is the most ancient Hebrew word for love. It is probably a primitive caressing syllable taken from the sound da-da that babies make. Babies' sounds are alos the origin of words like אמא - mamma, אבא - papa. This accounts for words like these being found in so many different languages.

דוד dod - lover, has come to mean "uncle". Next to the mother and father, the uncle was the lover and guardian.

As pointed out here (and discussed in the comments on this post), a connection between lover and uncle might be found in the fact that it was common, perhaps encouraged, for uncles to marry nieces in ancient times.

Horowitz also connects dod to the mandrake flowers known as dudaim דודאים because "women believed these flowers stimulated their husbands' love for them." I did find a source that tried to connect dud דוד - "kettle" (in Biblical Hebrew, now "boiler") to dod:

dod {dode}; from an unused root meaning properly, to boil, i.e. (figuratively) to love;

However none of my dictionaries connected dud to dod, and the Encyclopedia Mikrait says that dud actually comes from Egyptian.

A different view of the origin of dod can be found in Sanmartin-Ascaso's extensive article on dod in the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. He writes:

Etymology. Little can be said with certainty about the etymology of Heb. dodh, pl. dodhim. It is possible that dodh is an onomatopoeic word (dad[u]) which arose out of repetition of the da, as is often the case with words that denote kinship. It is quite likely that dodh is a nominal form derived from the root w/ydd "to love" (-> ידד yadhadh). The question whether w/ydd can be traced back to an original onomatopoeic word (cf. Hurrian tat[t], "love") must remain open, as must also that of a possible connection between dodh and s/dad, "breasts".

He then goes on to describe how the different Semitic languages had different meanings for dod. In the Eastern languages, such as Akkadian, the word

means "beloved, darling" and denotes a (personal) object of love.

However, the Western Semitic languages such as Arabic

all use dwd in the sense of "(paternal) uncle"

He then presents the development of the word as follows:

One must assume a development form an original onomatopoeic word, perhaps *dada, "darling", to a verbal root (w/y)dd, "to love", from which the substantives dwd and ydd arose. If one assumes that the "uncle" played an important role in the Semitic family as provider and helper, the shift to uncle is easily understandable. In the East and Northwest Semitic region, dd retained the meaning "darling". But among the Aramean and Arabian tribes, where the way of life was influenced for a longer time by (semi-)nomadism and the family ties were stronger, the meaning "uncle" became predominant.

Sanmartin-Ascaso here provides a connection between the root ידד and dod. Klein, however, does not connect the two, but only writes the following in his entry for yadid ידיד - "friend, beloved":

Related to Ugaritic ydd (=friend, beloved), Syriac ידד, Arabic wadda (=he loved), Old South Arabic ודד ( = to love), Akkadian namaddu (=beloved).

Returning to Sanmartin-Ascaso, he points out that:

An initial survey makes it clear that in the OT two different meanings of dodh come together. One coincides with the Aramaic and Old South Arabic usage; here dodh means "(paternal) uncle".
The other corresponds to the meaning of the word among the old, sedentary and civilized peoples of Mesopotamia and Syria, viz. "darling, beloved".

We can now see three meanings of two (possibly) related words. In the Tanach, we find dod having only one of two meanings - uncle or romantic lover (very common in Shir HaShirim). In addition, we find the word yadid which seems to have only the platonic meaning of "friend". (This is also the meaning in modern Hebrew. When a girl says she has a chaver חבר, it means "boyfriend". If she wants to say just "friend", with no romantic connotations, she would say yadid. The same applies to chavera חברה and yedida ידידה for a boy.)

Gesenius brings two proofs that dod can mean "friend". I find this difficult. First of all, his only textual proof is from Yishayahu 5:1, and this is a difficult verse, but as Sanmartin-Ascaso writes (pg. 150):

To translate dodh by "friend" here would falsify the meaning and purpose of Isaiah's composition. In this context dodh means "beloved" in its fullest sense.

Gesenius then brings two parallel examples from other languages. He mentions the Aramaic חביבא as meaning "friend" and then "uncle". This is found in Bava Batra 41b, where Rav Chiya calls his uncle Rav by that term. However, Steinsaltz mentions a theory that חביבי might be a contraction of אחי אבי - "my father's brother". He also mentions that the Latin word for aunt, amita, is related to amata, "beloved". However, we've already seen that amita may very well be related to the Hebrew em. In any case, nothing he wrote convinces me that the Biblical dod means anything other than uncle or lover.

This division may help me solve my oldest etymological puzzle. For those that don't know, my name is David. I remember from when I was very young, I had a small framed card in my room, upon which it said that the name David meant "beloved". That seemed very nice - certainly "beloved" is a compliment. However, when I started learning Hebrew, that etymology seemed a little strange to me. I knew ahuv אהוב as "beloved", and that dod had connections to "love", but what was this strange form דוד (or דויד)? I know that it can be more difficult to determine the origins of names than other words - but why beloved? Why not "lover" or "loving"?

Most sources I've checked have connected david to dod. But the article on David by Carlson in the Theological Dictionary gave me some additional insight. It mentions that David, while mentioned 790 times in the Tanach, is associated exclusively with the king. Carlson writes that the meaning is "darling". He rejects a number of theories, including those that say that David wasn't his original name (but rather Elchanan) or that the name derives from the Akkadian word dawidum (found in the Mari tablets) meaning "(to inflict) defeat" (see the Encyclopedia Mikrait on David). He does write that:

From a linguistic point of view, the name Davidh can be understood as an imitation of yadhidh (homophony). It is less likely that Davidh is a passive participle of a verb dudh or that dodh was changed to davidh after the pattern of mashiach, "anointed one, messiah", or nasi, "chief, prince."

The suggestion that David derives from yadid and not dod, makes sense to me. As I mentioned earlier, in the Bible dod only means "uncle" or "romantic lover" - neither of which would be the likely source of the name David. There is also some textual evidence to support this. For example, we find that David's son Shlomo was also known as Yedidya (Shmuel II 12:24-25):

תֵּלֶד בֵּן, ויקרא (וַתִּקְרָא) אֶת-שְׁמוֹ שְׁלֹמֹה, וַה', אֲהֵבוֹ. וַיִּשְׁלַח, בְּיַד נָתָן הַנָּבִיא, וַיִּקְרָא אֶת-שְׁמוֹ, יְדִידְיָהּ--בַּעֲבוּר, השם.

She bore him a son and named him Shlomo. The Lord loved him, and he sent a message through the prophet Natan; and he was named Yedidya at the instance of the Lord.

In addition, we find that Binyamin was also called yadid of God in Moshe's blessing (Devarim 33:12). What is the connection between Binyamin, David and Shlomo? Carlson writes:

It is significant that the youngest brother often receives the name "darling". In the OT, Solomon's name "Jedidah" reflects this custom (2 S. 11:27, 12:24f). The youngest of the Jacob tribes, Benjamin, receives the epithet yedhidh yhvh, "the beloved of God" (Dt. 33:12). Therefore, it is understandable that the eighth (1 2. 16:10f; 17:12; according to 1 Ch. 2:13-16, the seventh) and youngest son of Jesse is given the name Davidh, "darling".

Tigay, in the JPS Devarim on 33:12, noticed the connection as well, but offers a slightly different explanation:

Beloved of the Lord: If this means that God favored Benjamin politically, it could reflect the tribe's prestige when Ehud the Benjaminite was chieftain, when Samuel's leadership was centered in the Benjaminite territory, or the choice of the Benjaminite Saul as Israel's first king (note that the future King Solomon was called Yedidyah, "Beloved of the Lord" [2 Sam 12:25].)

So either yadid referred to the youngest son or it meant the one chosen for the kingship. Perhaps it even meant both, since usually the oldest son would be chosen for leadership, and here, yadid designated a chosen, youngest, darling son. (A proof of my objectivity is that despite me being the oldest son and a David, I put forth that theory.)

Jastrow translates yadid as "chosen". His etymology is rather far-fetched so I won't go into it, but the usage in Rabbinic literature does seem to fit that definition. For example, in Mechilta Beshalach 2:5, it describes ידידי טובעים בים - I think the translation "my chosen ones are drowning in the sea" works better than "my friends are drowning in the sea."

In modern Hebrew, dod has no romantic connotation at all. When not used for "uncle", it can mean "buddy" in slang.

In biblical Hebrew we find the phrase ben-dod בן דוד for "the son of the uncle", i.e. cousin. Apparently at the time of the 1943 kinship terms dictionary (discussed here), it was decided that a better term for cousin would be dodan דודן (the female is dodanit דודנית). I'm not sure what motivated the change - perhaps they felt that ben dod wasn't accurate enough, since a cousin could be the son of an aunt, or even a second cousin (not the descendant of an uncle or an aunt.) But in any case, the term is rarely used, and Safa Ivrit says it is usually found only in translated literature.

Tweet

hora and horim

After discussing av and em, lets discuss the more generic term for mother and father: horim הורים - "parents". An informal survey I took of both native and non-native Hebrew speakers found that many of them thought that word was related to the word for teacher - moreh מורה and teaching - horaah הוראה. However, the word has a different root altogether. Moreh derives from the root ירה - "to teach", which is also the root of the word תורה - torah. Horeh comes from the root הרה - "to conceive, become pregnant". From this root we get the word herayon הריון - pregnancy.

The word is of biblical origin, but the story is a little strange here. Twice in the Tanach we find the word hora הורה - in Shir HaShirim 3:4 and Hoshea 2:7. In both instances, the word clearly means "mother". And that makes sense - the one who becomes pregnant is indeed the mother.

We do find the word horim, actually horai הורי, in one verse - Bereshit 49:26, in Yaakov's blessing to Yosef:

בִּרְכֹת אָבִיךָ, גָּבְרוּ עַל-בִּרְכֹת הוֹרַי, עַד-תַּאֲוַת, גִּבְעֹת עוֹלָם

The JPS translates this as: "The blessings of your father surpass the blessings of my ancestors [horai], to the utmost bounds of the eternal hills."

However, Sarna comments on the translation "my ancestors":

Hebrew horai is so rendered based on postbiblical usage. However, the stem h-r-h in the Bible can only mean "to become pregnant" and is, of course, solely used in the feminine. Seeing that "mountain(s)" - "hill(s)" is a fixed pair of parallel terms in Hebrew poetry, occuring more than thirty times in that order, Rashbam is undoubtedly correct in connecting horai here with har, "mountain." The Septuagint indeed reads here "ancient mountains," joining the word to the following 'ad. The phrase harere 'ad, "ancient mountains," appears in Habakkuk 3:6 in parallel with give'ot 'olam, "eternal hills." The Blessing of Moses to Joseph in Deuteronomy 33:15 employs the same imagery, though in variant form: "With the best from the ancient mountains, / And the bounty of hills immemorial..." Therefore it is best to render here, "the blessings of the ancient mountains".

I find Sarna rather convincing here. Hora certainly seems to mean mother, and the verse in Bereshit does look like it is referring to mountains. So biblically we only had a word referring to the mother, and in post-biblical Hebrew the generic term horeh for "parent" developed. The word "parent" itself in English had a similar development:

from O.Fr. parent (11c.), from L. parentem (nom. parens) "father or mother, ancestor," noun use of prp. of parere "bring forth, give birth to, produce," from PIE base *per- "to bring forth"

I haven't seen proof of this, but it wouldn't surprise me if the Latin parentem (or an earlier version) originally meant "mother", since she is the one who gives birth.

What I do find strange is how the words are listed in the dictionary. Both Klein and Even-Shoshan have listings for hora, horeh and horim. Even if they accept the more traditional understanding of Bereshit 49:26 as "my parents", I don't see why they need to have a separate entry for the plural form of the word. I suppose it's to say that the singular horeh means "father", not "parent", whereas only the plural horim is truly generic. But that's not the way it is used in Modern Hebrew. The popular online Hebrew-English dictionary Morfix translates horeh only as "parent", and doesn't have an entry for hora - as mother - at all.

Morfix does, of course, have an entry for another meaning of hora - the folk dance. And no, they're not related. As Philologos discusses here:

“Hora” comes from ancient Greek khoros, which also gives us such words as “chorus” and “choir.” Traditional circle dances deriving their names from khoros can be found all over the Balkans and southeastern Europe. They include the Turkish and Romanian hora, the Bulgarian horo, the Montenegrin and Macedonian ora, and the Russian khorovod, and they are all very old and highly similar in the way they are danced.

And the Online Etymology Dictionary provides the following background to "chorus":

from Gk. khoros "band of dancers or singers, dance, dancing ground," from PIE *ghoro-. In Attic tragedy, the khoros gave expression, between the acts, to the moral and religious sentiments evoked by the actions of the play.

And just in case I have any readers who are accustomed to the Ashkenazi kamatz - there is also no connection to the hora found in the terms "loshon hora" or "yetzer hora". I'll be sure to let you know if I stop using Israeli pronunciation...

Tweet

moten and matun

A friend of mine recently asked me if there was any connection between the following words:

1. מותן moten - hip, loin, waist
2. מתון matun - moderate
3. המתין himtin- he waited
4. מתנה matana- gift

First of all, we can safely say that #4 is not related to the first 3. The original form of the word of the word was מנתנה, but the nun dropped out (as we've seen here for example). The root of the word is therefore נתן - not connected to the other three.
As far as #2 and #3, everyone agrees they are related. Klein says the root מתן means "to slow down, act slowly". Matun means he was moderate, patient and himtin means he waited (a sign of patience.) From what I can see there is no difference between להמתין and לחכות - both mean wait, but לחכות is used in the Tanach, and להמתין appears first in Lashon Chazal. In fact, when the verb חכה appears in Iyov 32:4, the Targum translates, and Rashi explains it as being המתין.
So what about moten? Any relation to matun? Klein does not suggest a connection, but Steinberg does. Steinberg says that the root מתן means "was long, was stretched" (Jastrow does as well.) He says this is the source of motnayim מתניים (the word always appears in the plural in the Tanach.) He doesn't exactly explain the connection between "to stretch" and "waist, hips", but I bet many of us could look at our belts and begin to associate...
Steinberg goes further and connects this root with a number of other words beginning with the same two letters. The verb מתח is fairly easy to connect - it means "to spread out, to stretch".
He also connects them to the word matai מתי - which besides meaning "when?" also means "a length of time" (see Yirmiyahu 13:27). He gives a number of additional examples (Habbakuk 2:6, Tehillim 80:5) and says that it is an error to always explain there matai as being part of a question.
Another related word, according to Steinberg is mavet or mot מות - death. He explains the idea of a dead person "lying down, stretched out".
Lastly, he connects the word metim מתים - meaning people, as in ויהי מתיו מספר - (Devarim 33:6) - "and let not his men be few". However, he doesn't explain the connection, so I can't write it here...

Tweet