shin and sin

Well, we're almost done with the alphabet. Today we'll deal with the second-to-last of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet - shin / sin. The name of the letter derives from the early shape - that of a tooth or teeth, as in the Hebrew word for tooth - shen שן (Steinberg adds that the sound is also made by using the teeth). According to Klein, the word shen derives from the root שנן - "to sharpen".

As you can see from the title of this post, this letter is more complicated than others. Sin or shin? Klein writes:

The letter ש marks two different sounds: sin and shin. Hebrew sin corresponds to Aramaic shin and samech, Syrian samech, Ugaritic sh, Arabic sh. ... compare Hebrew נשא, Biblical Aramaic נשא, Aramaic נסא ( = he lifted, took, carried), Ugar. nsh (to lift), Arabic nasha'a (= he rose, was high, grew up)...

There are exceptions to the rule according to which Arabic sh corresponds to Hebrew sin and vice versa. These exceptions are due mainly to assimilation, partly also to the circumstance that Hebrew sin sometimes stands for original samech (see שכך, שבר, שתם). In earlier Aramaic, and Biblical Aramaic sin is generally preserved, but many words that have sin in Biblical Hebrew are regularly spelled with samech in Medieval Hebrew.

Hebrew shin corresponds to Aramaic-Syrian shin, Ugaritic sh, Arab s ... compare Hebrew שלום, Aramaic-Syrian שלם, Ugaritic shlm, Arabic salam...

In many cases Hebrew shin corresponds to Aramaic-Syrian tav, Arabic th ... compare Hebrew שלוש, Aramaic-Syrian תלת, Arabic thalath...

So we see that there are two letters - sin and shin. Horowitz goes further, and divides shin into two different letters:

Two different sounds are represented by the Hebrew letter shin. One is originally and really shin; the other is a "th" sound that coalesced into shin in Hebrew. Scholars write this second sound ת.

He then gives a number of examples where shin becomes tav in Aramaic: שור / תור , פשר / פתר, שנים / תנים.

He then continues by saying (as we have seen with ayin and tzade) that because of the dual nature of shin, you cannot connect certain words even though they seem to have the same root:

• שמן (fat) and שמונה (eight)
• שער (reckon) and שער (gate)
• נשר (eagle) and נשר (drop or fall off)
• שאר (remainder) and שאר (kin)
• חרש (plow) and חרש (be silent)
• ישן (sleep) and ישן (old)
• שלח (send) and שולחן (table)

All of these, according to Horowitz, can be proved by examples where only one of the pair gets a tav in Aramaic (or Ugaritic).

Steinberg writes that there are some Hebrew words that have shin added as a suffix instead of tav:

• חרמש - from חרם
• חלמיש - from חלם
• עכביש - from עכב
  

In Greek there was no "sh" sound, so many proper names were translated with "s": Moshe / Moses, Shlomo / Solomon, Shmuel / Samuel.

The letter shin as a prefix (she-) means "that". The full word for "that" is asher אשר. Eliyahu Netanel here discusses which came first - she- or asher? He believes that she- came first, with an alef and resh added on later.

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resh

The 20th letter of the Hebrew alphabet is resh. It gets its name from the original shape of the letter - like a rosh ראש - head.

In addition to "head", rosh can also mean "chief, leader", "top, summit", "beginning" and "principal, capital". Some other word derived from rosh are rishon ראשון - "first", reshit ראשית - "beginning", and rashi ראשי - "chief, primary".

The Aramaic version of rosh is closer to our pronunciation of the letter - ריש resh. From here we get the word reisha רישא meaning "the first part (of a Mishna)".

In Arabic, ras as head is found in many place names such as Ras al-Khaimah ("top of the tent") and Ras Tanura ("head of the barbeque spit"). Rais is another Arabic derivation, meaning "president".

While there is some debate among scholars, one opinion as to the etymology of the word "race" meaning "tribe" is from our root, via Arabic. Klein writes in his CEDEL:

race, n., family tribe. -- MF. ( = F.), fr. earlier rasse, fr. It. razza, which together with Sp. raza, prob. derives fr. Arab. ra's , 'head, beginning, origin', which is rel. to Heb. rosh

As we have seen earlier, resh can interchange with lamed and nun. Steinberg adds that the similarity of the shapes of resh and dalet cause them to alternate as well - for example ראה (Devarim 14:13) and דאה (Vayikra 11:14).

Resh is occasionally added to three letter roots and words: שבט / שרביט , כסא / כרסא. In other cases, the resh is assimilated - כרכר becomes ככר.

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peh

(You may have noticed the layout of this site has changed a bit. For a while I've been trying to figure out a way to make it more readable, and easier to find previous posts. Now that I've switched to the new version of Blogger, I think there's a big improvement. In addition to a different layout, note the expandable monthly archives link, and the new categories section. I'll try to give a "category" to every common type of posting to make it easier to see all of them together. If you have any questions or problems with the new layout, please let me know.)

Peh is the seventeenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The name derives from the word peh פה - "mouth", and this was the original shape of the letter. As we've seen earlier, peh can alternate with bet, vav and mem.

Besides "mouth", peh can also mean "speech", "opening" and "portion" (as in pi shnayim פי שניים - "double".)

Similar to the word yad (hand), peh makes up a number of prepositions:

• כפי - like, as
• לפי - according to
• על פי - in accordance with
• אף על פי - although
  

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ayin

The sixteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet is ayin. The word literally means "eye" and is so called due to the original form of the letter. This letter was borrowed by Greek for their vowels omicron and omega, and became the letter O in Latin (Sacks suggests that there may be a connection between the shape of the letter and the shape of a speaker's mouth when saying "o"). However, ayin is a guttural consonant in Hebrew.

Horowitz writes that ayin "is a twin letter":

Ancient Hebrew had two different ayin sounds. These sounds were represented in our alphabet by the letter ayin. One was a harsh, heavy ayin. This is now lost, and no longer used in Hebrew. The other was a soft, mild ayin. When the Greek Jews translated the Bible into Greek, they had to transliterate Hebrew names having the harsh ayin in it. They used the Greek letter gamma for it - so you can imagine how hard a sound it must have been.

This "ayin gayin" has even come all the way down to English. The Hebrew place names עמורה (amora) and עזה (aza) both of which have this strong ayin were transliterated into Greek as Gommora and Gaza. Didn't the odd forms of these place names in English ever puzzle you?...

Incidentally, Arabic, a close sister language of Hebrew, still pronounces these two ayins differently, and what's more writes them differently.

He then goes on to list a number of pairs of words that would seem to be related based on the letters in their roots, but each originally was based on a different ayin:

עצב sad vs. עצב fashion, shape
עופר deer vs. עפר dust
עור be naked vs. עור be awake

Steinberg writes that there are different alternating letters for the soft and hard ayins. The softer ayin would switch with the other guttural letters: alef (תעב תאב), heh (no example provided) and chet (ענק חנק). The harder ayin switches with gimel (רעש רגש), kaf (עטר כתר) and kuf (ערא קרה). Kuf (as we will see later) can sometimes switch with tzade, so we sometimes have the jump from ayin to tzade as well: רבע רבק רבץ , עוק צוק, ארעא ארקא ארץ.

Klein adds that in some cases, the ayin will fall out of a word, as in רות which may derive from רעות.

From the word ayin (the English word eye has an unrelated etymology) we get ein עין and maayan מעין - meaning "spring, fountain", and according to Klein and others this is a shorter version of עין המים - "eye of the water".

Klein says that the word maon מעון - residence is related to ein, but I don't exactly understand how.

From ayin we get the verbs עין - "to look carefully at", and also "to look askance at" - from which derives the adjective oyen עוין - "hostile".

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kaf

The 11th letter in the Hebrew alphabet is kaf (or kaph): כ

The letter gets its name due to its similarity to the shape of the palm of a hand: כף היד kaf hayad. Besides meaning "hand, palm of the hand", kaf can also mean "sole of the foot", "pan, censer", branch (of a palm tree - כפות תמרים kapot tamarim, the Torah's name for lulav), handle, scale, spoon. The word kfafa כפפה - glove, kapit -כפית - teaspoon, and kafkaf כפכף - "wooden shoe, clog", all come from kaf. According to Klein, "all of these words derive from base כפף and literally mean 'that which is bent'".

From כפף - "to bend, be bent" and the related verb כפה -"to force, compel" we get a number of words:

• kfifa - כפיפה - wicker basket, perhaps called so because of a bent shape. When two people can't work together, it is said they can't live בכפיפה אחת - "in the same basket".
  
• kfia - כפיה - compulsion. A big issue in Israeli politics is always kfia datit כפיה דתית - "religious coercion."
• kippah כיפה - originally meaning "arch, vault, dome" and later "cap, skullcap"

However, the Arabic headdress keffiyeh gets its name from the town of Kufa, Iraq, where it was originally manufactured.

Kaf alternates with kof (qof) and gimmel - as can be seen by Stahl, Klein and others who say that כף is related to קב and גב - all having meanings related to "bend".

An interesting etymological side note: kaf means both the "palm" of the hand and the branches of "palm" trees. In English, the two meanings of "palm" are related, but they derive from an earlier root meaning "spread out, flat", whereas the Hebrew kaf means "bent".

(A less interesting, non-etymological side note. After my post on uchmanit, I have received a number of hits that seem to come from people looking for information about Blackberry devices in Hebrew. Am I going to get similar ones for people looking for information about Palm Pilot handhelds in Hebrew?)

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paam

We've explained the origin of the term regel רגל for a festival. Well, the Torah provides a synonym for regel only a few verses away. In Shmot 23:14 we see:

שָׁלֹשׁ רְגָלִים, תָּחֹג לִי בַּשָּׁנָה

and in verse 17 we see:

שָׁלֹשׁ פְּעָמִים, בַּשָּׁנָה

Both are talking about "three times a year", and on that basis we can view regel as being equivalent to פעם pa'am - both mean "time, occasion". However, while everyone seems to agree that the original meaning of regel was "foot", there is disagreement about paam. Some view the original meaning also as foot (I think it can be seen in Kaddari's Dictionary and in the commentaries on Shmot of both Nachum Sarna (Chapter 27, note 34) and Amos Chacham (on 23:17) . This can be seen from such verses as Shir HaShirim 7:2: מַה-יָּפוּ פְעָמַיִךְ בַּנְּעָלִים - "How lovely are your feet in sandals" and Yishayahu 26:6 פַּעֲמֵי דַלִּים - "soles of the poor". And as Chacham points out, while paam mostly lost its meaning as "feet", regel kept its meaning as feet, but became less associated with "occasion".

(The association of paam with feet makes for some nice biblical imagery, but creates some strange phrases in Modern Hebrew. For example, foods that want to sound "classic" or "old-fashioned" claim to have a taam shel paam טעם של פעם , as in Treppenwitz's "shamenet shel pa'am". However, the idea of sour cream coming from feet isn't so appetizing.)

However, others, such as Klein, Steinberg and Almagor-Ramon, say that the earlier meaning was "to strike, to beat". From here the meaning went to "step" (both verb and noun), and from there both to "foot" and to "occurrence, time". The meaning of "to strike, to beat" is maintained in such verbs as התפעם - "was disturbed, troubled", peimot פעימות "heartbeats" or "strokes/ strikes" (who remembers the peimot promised after the Wye Agreement?) and paamon פעמון - bell.

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regel

Another name for the pilgrimage festivals is regalim רגלים , or in the singular רגל regel. While this meaning is used extensively in rabbinic literature, it appears only once in the Tanach, and had a different connotation. As Klein writes:

The literal meaning of שלש רגלים is 'three feet, three steps', whence arose the meaning 'three times'. From שלש רגלים in the verse Exodus 23:14 שָׁלֹשׁ רְגָלִים, תָּחֹג לִי בַּשָּׁנָה ('Three times you shall keep a feast unto me in the year') developed in post-Biblical times the meaning of שלש רגלים as 'the three festivals of pilgrimage' (first used in this sense in the Mishnah), whence - through back formation - the singular רגל was also used in the sense of festival of pilgrimage.

While there are examples in the Rabbinic literature which connect the concept of regel as pilgrimage and the more basic meaning of regel as foot (see the first mishna in Chagiga), it is clear from the story of Bilaam that regel could mean "(a) time" without direct connection to feet. There, Bilaam's donkey asks "What have I done to you that you have beaten me these three times (shalosh regalim)?" So we have an exact parallel with the verse in Shmot where we are commanded to have a feast "three times". (Milgrom in JPS Numbers quotes a source that perhaps the expression always used the number three.)

Since regel - foot - is a very basic word in a language, it is not surprising that a number of other meanings derive from it.

For example, the verb רגל means "to slander" or "to spy", just as a spy - a meragel מרגל - walks about on foot. A related verb is רכל - which means "to go about from place to place (for trade or gossip.)" From here we get the word markolet מרכולת - but not makolet מכולת .

Another meaning of רגל is "to be accustomed to, to be used to". Klein explains this as originally meaning "to go on foot", and from there "to go about frequently". From this meaning we get:

• הרגיל - to train, to make familiar
• התרגל - to become accustomed to
• תרגל - originally meaning "to teach to walk" in Hosea 11:3, now means "to train, to drill"
• רגיל - ragil - usual, common, customary, and also experienced, trained (as in the prayer before Mussaf on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur - כתפילת זקן ורגיל - "the prayers of an experienced elder".

The star Rigel also gets its name from here - via the Arabic rijl - as it is the foot of Orion.

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yod

The tenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet is yod (or yud or yodh). The origin of the letter's name is clear - it looks like a yad יד - arm or hand (see here and here.) It is the smallest of the Hebrew letters, and due to its size the Greek version of the name - iota - came to mean "a very small amount" and from iota came the word jot, which later meant "to make a short note of."

Yad is a very common word in the Tanach - Even Shoshan gives 1617 listings. So it is a bit beyond the scope of this post to deal with every nuance of the word. Besides hand or arm, it can also mean: handle, stem (of a fruit), monument / place, power / strength, part / portion, side, pointer (some Biblical examples here.) It is part of a large number of prepositions in Hebrew:

• ביד - by, through
• כיד - according to the power of
• ליד - near
• מיד - immediately
• לידי - to
• מידי - from
• על יד - next to
• על ידי - through

There is also a verb derived from yad - ידה - meaning "to throw, hurl, cast". Throwing of stones is יידוי אבנים - yidui avanim. The commentary Haketav Vehakabbalah on Vayikra 5:5 says that the verb והתוודה - "he will confess" derives from ידה - he throws away the sin. In this sense, vidui וידוי (confession) is identical with tashlich תשליך - both mean "throwing away." (I was planning on talking about vidui closer to Yom Kippur, but we're in Elul, so it's close enough.)
But while Haketav Vehakabbalah tries to explain how vidui is different than hodaah הודאה - praise (which would seem to be from the same root), Steinberg connects all three meanings. First of all, he writes that vidui is identified with bowing, prostrating oneself, throwing oneself on the ground - as in Nechemia 9:3 - מִתְוַדִּים וּמִשְׁתַּחֲוִים and Ezra 10:1 - וּכְהִתְוַדֹּתוֹ, בֹּכֶה וּמִתְנַפֵּל.
He then goes on to write that the verb הודה - to give praise, thanks (and the root of todah תודה - "thank you") - was also connected with bowing. As a proof, he shows how the Targum translates Shmuel II 16:4 - הִשְׁתַּחֲוֵיתִי as מודינא. He writes that only once in the Tanach is הודה used towards a person - יְהוּדָה, אַתָּה יוֹדוּךָ אַחֶיךָ - "Yehuda, your brothers will praise you" (which is a play on words on the name Yehuda.) In all other places, the verb is used towards God, where bowing and prostration are very appropriate. This concept was carried forward in to the Amida prayer, where we bow when we say מודים אנחנו לך.
From the Daat Mikra on Yoel 4:3, it would seem that perhaps there is a connection between ידה - to throw away - and נדה - the root of nidah נידה and nidui נידוי, both referring to a person cast away. But it's not entirely clear from that source, and the other sources I've checked are ambiguous at best. (For example, Klein says that נדה is related to Akkadian nadu ("to throw"), but doesn't connect it back to ידה.)
Lastly, just in case you were wondering, Philologos shows that yad is not connected to "yadda, yadda, yadda."

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af

In this weeks parasha (Devarim) we find that Moshe claims that God was angry at him:

גַּם-בִּי הִתְאַנַּף

What is the meaning of the root אנף? Here is another example of a "dropped nun" (more here, here and here). We are more familiar with the dropped form - af אף, meaning "nose" and "anger", I suppose due to heavy breathing during anger. (By the way, it is important to distinguish between אף - "nose" and עף - "fly". For years I thought that kadur-af -- volleyball -- was spelled כדור-אף, and couldn't understand why Israelis played it with their nose.)

Arabic has anf for nose, and in Aramaic, anaf אנף also means "face". Kutscher writes that in Lashon Chazal there are very few examples of af meaning "nose", and instead chotem חוטם was more popular. His explanation for the switch is a phenomenon where one word in Biblical Hebrew has two meanings (here both anger and nose), in Lashon Chazal, one of the meanings sticks (in this case "anger") and the other is replaced. (Another example of this is עץ and אילן - but I'll save that for a later post).

A derivative of אנף meaning "anger" is the bird anafa אנפה - "heron", which according to Klein originally meant "the quarrelsome bird".

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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...

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toosh

One of the weird things to happen when learning a language is when you think a word means one thing, and you find out it means something else.

For example, I bet I'm not the first immigrant to do a double take when he heard an Israeli refer to a marker as a טוש toosh. Even the most assimilated Jews in America know that tush is Yiddish for buttocks. So what's the connection?

Well, first of all, there is no connection - the words are just homonyms. Let's look at each part.

Tush comes from the Yiddish tokhes, from the Hebrew תחת tachat - bottom. The transformation does not seem to be a natural one. I found two postings on the Mendele list that gave theories as to its development.

In 1995 Zellig Bach wrote:

The accepted substitute in English for "tokhes" has been _tushie_ or_tushy_, apparently formed, according to Steinmetz, on the basis of a baby-talk diminutive. This word was then shortened to "tush," as in Mel Brooks' classic movie "Blazing Saddles," where a women bar singer by the name (I believe) of Von Push, in a satirical spoof of a Marlene Dietrich seductive song, rhymed "push" with "tush."

And in 2004, Enrique E. Gildemeister wrote:

"Nebbish" is the Western Yiddish pronunciation of "nebekh". But, could it be that, like "tush" for "tokhes", "nebbish" is used by East European immigrants' children because _kh_ does not exist in American English? Maybe the similarity with Western Yiddish is just a coincidence.

And what about the marker known as toosh? It comes from the German tusche:

NOUN: A black liquid used for drawing in lithography and as a resist in etching and silk-screen work.
ETYMOLOGY: German, back-formation from tuschen, to lay on colors, from French toucher, from Old French tochier, touchier, to touch. See touch.

The two other common terms for marker in Israel are לורד lord (originally a brand name) and מרקר mahrker - most prominently seen in the Israeli business publication TheMarker (pronounced in Hebrew as de-marker and written דהמרקר).

Another meaning of toosh in Hebrew is shower head. Another pronunciation is doosh, and according to this site, both are correct. They both originate in the European word douche, which is related to the Italian doccia meaning "shower," and is a etymological cousin of aqueduct.

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