agartal

The word אֲגַרְטָל agartal, meaning "vase" in Modern Hebrew, doesn’t look like a native Hebrew word. But it actually has a biblical origin. It appears in only one verse, in a list of vessels taken by Nebuchadnezzar from the Temple in Jerusalem and then returned by Cyrus:

וְאֵלֶּה מִסְפָּרָם אֲגַרְטְלֵי זָהָב שְׁלֹשִׁים אֲגַרְטְלֵי־כֶסֶף אָלֶף מַחֲלָפִים תִּשְׁעָה וְעֶשְׂרִים׃

"This is the inventory: 30 gold basins, 1,000 silver basins, 29 knives" (Ezra 1:9) 

The verse only has the plural construct אֲגַרְטְלֵי־, so the singular isn’t written there. Older sources sometimes vocalized it אֲגַרְטֵל (agartél), but Modern Hebrew uses אֲגַרְטָל (agartál).

Agartal certainly refers to a type of vessel or container, but exactly which one isn't clear. Translations suggest basin (as above), along with bowl, platter, and dish. The Septuagint translation into Greek renders agartal as ψυκτήρ (psyktḗr) - a wine cooler, or cooling vessel. Some rabbinic sources, such as Ibn Janach, suggest it was a handwashing vessel or jug.

The construct form also leads to some ambiguity. While generally the understanding is of containers made of gold and silver ("gold basins ... silver basins"), some conjecture that they were made for holding gold and silver, in which case they could be baskets or bags made of other materials.

That possibility aligns with one theory as to the etymology of agartal. Klein writes:

Of uncertain origin. Prob. related to Aram. קַרטַלָּא, Gk. kartallos (= basket).

Another suggestion for a Greek origin, found in this article, proposes that it comes from κρατήρ (kratḗr). The author argues this fits better with "gold basin", since a krater is a large mixing bowl, which would be made from valuable metals.

Other theories suggest a Persian origin, often framed as a type of bag or container, or a Hittite word which might have meant basket.

Outside Ezra, the word is rare, but it later became the Modern Hebrew word for the fancy word "vase."

Sources:

• Word of the Day Agartal: The Baffling Origin of the Word for Vase - Haaretz Com
• Unveiling the 2,500-Year-Old Mystery Behind a Vase | TikTok
• Steinsaltz Center - Ezra 1
• אֲגַרְטֵל – מילון העברית הישנה והחדשה / אליעזר בן־יהודה – פרויקט בן־יהודה
• אגרטל - ויקימילון
• אגרטל - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
• BDB, אֲגַרְטָל² 1 | Sefaria Library

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chayil and chayal

Devarim 8:17-18 includes a well-known passage where the people are warned against attributing their successes to their own talents, instead of attributing them to God:

וְאָמַרְתָּ בִּלְבָבֶךָ כֹּחִי וְעֹצֶם יָדִי עָשָׂה לִי אֶת־הַחַיִל הַזֶּה. וְזָכַרְתָּ אֶת־יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ כִּי הוּא הַנֹּתֵן לְךָ כֹּחַ לַעֲשׂוֹת חָיִל...

A repeated word in these verses is chayil חָיִל. Since the word for "soldier" in Hebrew is the similar chayal חַיָּל, I assumed that the Torah here was talking about military success. And yet, the translations consistently offer a very different meaning. Here is a typical translation:

And should you say to yourselves, “My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me.” Remember that it is the LORD your God who gives you the power to get wealth...

Chayil here is translated as "wealth." What is the connection between "wealth" and "soldier"?

To answer this, let's look at the various meanings of chayil in Biblical Hebrew. It appears frequently, with over 200 occurrences in the Tanakh. Kaddari breaks down the various appearances into these meanings:

1. Physical strength (e.g., Tehilim 76:6)
2. Spiritual strengths, such as bravery, virtue, quickness, aptitude (e.g., Mishlei 31:10, the famous Eshet Chayil, "woman of valor")
3. Military power, army (e.g., Shemot 14:28)
4. Wealth (e.g., Tehilim 49:7)

Even-Shoshan, in his Concordance, has a somewhat different division: 

1. Strength, bravery (either physical or spiritual)
2. Military
3. Success, wealth

(For an interesting comparison of those usages, see the various medieval commentaries on Shemot 18:21, who give different interpretations to the use of chayil in that verse.)

When we have such a variety of meanings, it's natural to try to find a common thread between them, and if possible, a shared origin. And linguistic sources do make those efforts. However, what I've found so far, I haven't found very convincing.

For example, here's Klein's entry:

חַֽיִל m.n. 1 strength, power. 2 wealth. 3 army, host, force. [Related to BAram. חַיִל, Aram. חֵילָא, Syr. חַיְלָא (= strength, army), Arab. ḥaul, ḥayl (= strength, force), Akka. ellatu (= army), Ethiop. ḫayl (= strength, army).]

I don't see an obvious connection between strength/power and wealth, other than a general sense of power including control over resources like wealth. BDB has a similarly vague entry, defining chayil as "strength, efficiency, wealth, army", and deriving from the roots חיל/חול meaning "be firm, strong." While it is possible that there's a general association between strength and wealth (as well as military might), from my experience, words like this typically move from a more specific meaning to the more abstract ones, and so this doesn't quite sit right with me. Ben Yehuda, at least, admits that the origin of the root is unclear.

I, however, propose (cautiously) another theory. To get there, we need to return to Ben-Yehuda.

I mentioned earlier that the word chayal means "soldier." Unlike chayil, this is not an ancient word, but rather was devised by Ben-Yehuda. As Klein notes: 

coined by Eliezer ben Yehudah (1858–1922), from חַיִּל (= strength, army), on the analogy of Arab. ḫayyāl (= horseman, rider) from ḫayl (= horses).

The linguist Reuven Sivan (pp. 194-195 here) includes this coinage as part of Ben Yehuda's move from clumsier multiple-word phrases (common in Hebrew from the period of the Haskalah) for a term to single words. Prior to Ben Yehuda, a soldier may have been  referred to as an איש צבא, איש חיל, איש מלחמה, etc. Ben Yehuda took an Arabic word (ḫayyāl), related to a Hebrew word which sometimes has military associations (hayil) and created the catchy chayal, which was quickly adopted.

But notice that Arabic word, ḫayl (or chail), meaning horses. There are cases in Biblical Hebrew where chayil is associated with horses as well, such as Tehillim 33:17, where horses are presented in parallel to chayil:

שֶׁקֶר הַסּוּס לִתְשׁוּעָה וּבְרֹב חֵילוֹ לֹא יְמַלֵּט׃

"The horse is a false [hope] for deliverance, neither does its great strength provide escape."

I would like to suggest that perhaps the earliest meaning of the root חיל is "horse." Later, it developed into the more abstract senses we've seen before.

Chayil meaning strength could certainly have come from horses. In English, we have the term "horsepower," which came about much later, but the association between horse and power is a very old one.

The military association is also not surprising, as the most powerful militaries of the ancient world were supported by cavalry on horseback.

But what about wealth (the original cause of my investigation)? Well, we've seen in the past here several words that associate horses (or cattle) with property:

• rekhesh  רֶֽכֶשׁ meaning "team of horses" (Esther 8:10) and רְכוּשׁ meaning "property"
• mikneh  מִקְנֶה - "cattle" and the verb קנה - "to purchase"
• nekhes  נֶכֶס - "wealth, assets" related to the Aramaic root נכס meaning "to slaughter" and so nekhes was originally "cattle (to be killed)
• segula  סְגֻלָּה meant both "herd of cattle" and "property, treasure"

So perhaps chayil can be added to this list as well, as another word where horses (and cattle) became associated with the more abstract concepts of property and wealth. There is even support from the very passage I quoted in the beginning. A few verses before the warning of claiming credit for the acquired wealth, the Torah describes the source of that wealth:

וּבְקָרְךָ וְצֹאנְךָ יִרְבְּיֻן וְכֶסֶף וְזָהָב יִרְבֶּה־לָּךְ וְכֹל אֲשֶׁר־לְךָ יִרְבֶּה׃

"And your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold have increased, and everything you own has prospered" (Devarim 8:13)

While gold and silver certainly contribute to wealth, by placing the herds of cattle at the very top of the list, we can see the ancient association between the two concepts.

 

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shidah

A reader asked about the word shidah שִׁדָּה, translated by Morfix as "dresser, chest of drawers." That seemed like an easy task - but I didn't know what I was getting into.

The word shidah appears in only one verse in the entire Tanach. It appears twice in the verse, so I don't know if it counts as a hapax legomenon, but it certainly suffers from the same fate that other such words do - without multiple appearances, they are hard to translate. In this case, it's even harder, because the context of the verse itself leaves nearly infinite possible interpretations.

It appears in the book of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) in a section where the king is boasting about his possessions. Here is the Hebrew:

כָּנַסְתִּי לִי גַּם־כֶּסֶף וְזָהָב וּסְגֻלַּת מְלָכִים וְהַמְּדִינוֹת עָשִׂיתִי לִי שָׁרִים וְשָׁרוֹת וְתַעֲנֻגוֹת בְּנֵי הָאָדָם שִׁדָּה וְשִׁדּוֹת

And the English (but I'm not translating - yet - our word shidah)

I further amassed silver and gold and treasures of kings and provinces; and I got myself male and female singers, and the pleasures of people, shida v’shidot. (Kohelet 2:8)

This is an incredibly difficult phrase to translate. What does shidah mean here? Why is the singular shida followed by the plural shidot?  Even the punctuation is hard to place properly, but I'll leave that aside for now. 

All we can really say is that it's something (or a set of things) that a king would list among his treasured possessions.

This question did not escape the Sages. In the Talmud (Gittin 68b), two interpretations are offered:

שִׁדָּה וְשִׁדּוֹת הָכָא תַּרְגִּימוּ שֵׁידָה וְשֵׁידְתִין בְּמַעְרְבָא אָמְרִי שִׁידְּתָא

I'll translate the passage as follows:

"Here [in Babylonia] they interpreted the phrase as follows: 'male and female demons' [shedim]. In the West [= in the Land of Israel], they said it means shiddeta."

Let's put aside the "demon" translation. As Rav Hai Gaon (quoted by the Arukh) noted, this is a drash, and not the plain meaning of the verse in Kohelet. But what about the "Western" translation? I once again haven't translated it into English!

Well, if you look at the English translations, they say that in the Land of Israel they translated shidah and shidot as "carriages." This is clearly due to the influence of Rashi, the preeminent Talmudic commentator, who writes here that shiddeta (and shidah) refer to carriages for women and nobles: שידתא - שידה עגלה למרכבת נשים ושרים.

But with all due respect to Rashi, I'm not convinced that this is the only (or best) interpretation of the Talmudic passage, and as a result, the meaning of the verse in Kohelet.

The term shidah appears repeatedly throughout the Mishna, Tosefta and Talmuds. It frequently is part of a set, a shidah, a teiva, and a migdal - שִׁדָּה תֵּבָה וּמִגְדָּל. All of these are types of furniture. The Steinsaltz English translation renders them, for example in Mishna Shabbat 16:5, as "a box, a chest, and a closet." (The Ben Yehuda dictionary says the difference between these types of boxes is not clear). These identifications, or something similar to them, are offered by most translators, including Rambam. Rashi is the exception, who in almost all cases associates shidah with carriages (see the examples brought here). 

Why does he do that? I couldn't find any obvious examples in the Talmudic or Midrashic literature where shidah means carriage. There is mention of a shidah having wheels (Mishna Kelim 18:1-2), but this doesn't appear to be referring to carriages intended for nobles.

(The only possible exception is a midrash quoted by Torah Temimah on Kohelet 2:8, but I couldn't find the midrash anywhere, and in his commentary on the midrash he quotes Rashi. So something strange is going on.)

I assume the topic has been researched, and it's very likely I simply haven't seen more established theories. But here's my suggestion. I think that Rashi was trying to be consistent across all of his commentaries when he was defining words (this is something that Avineri discusses in his Heichal Rashi). In his commentary on Kohelet 2:8, Rashi writes:

שִׁדָּה וְשִׁדּוֹת. מַרְכְּבוֹת נוֹי, עֶגְלוֹת צָב, וּבִלְשׁוֹן גְּמָרָא יֵשׁ: שִׁדָּה, תֵּיבָה וּמִגְדָּל:

This is translated as:

Beautiful coaches, covered wagons, a term used in the Gemara, "a coach [shidah], a chest and a closet."

So once again, Rashi is willing to interpret the shidah in the furniture set as a carriage (or coach). I think that this may be the source of the rest of his explanations. Why would a king boast about having a box or a closet? However, a particular kind of container, a carriage, does have royal associations. (See for example the apriyon, "litter", mentioned with King Shlomo in Shir HaShirim 3:9). So to explain Kohelet, Rashi extends his understanding of the word to other contexts, even when they don't fit as well. 

I admire Rashi's consistency here, but I don't know if it's required in this case. As I mentioned, it's incredibly hard to interpret shidah veshidot in Kohelet, and it simply might not be related to the shidah found in the Talmud. That certainly appears to be the opinion of Ibn Ezra, who writes in his commentary to Kohelet:

וענין שדה ושדות. הם הנשים ויורה עליו ותענוגות בני האדם ועוד שהזכיר דברי כל תאוות העולם מבנין ונטיעה ומקנה וסגולה ושמוע שירים ואין זכרון לנשים ונחלקו המפרשים במלת שדה והטוב שבכולם שהוא מן שדד הנשים השדודות הנלקחות בחזקה בשוד ושביה שיבחר מהן כפי תאותו וענין שדה ושדות אחת ורבות כמו רחם רחמתים לראש גבר בעלת רחם אשה אחת ושתים והענין שלא תאמר אחת לבדה כי יש מי שתפש שתים:

To summarize his comment, he says that shida and shidot means "women." His evidence is that the verse earlier mentions the "pleasures of people" and the earlier verses relate to all kinds of other desires, but don't mention women, which would be expected. He derives shidah from the root שדד, "to plunder", indicating women taken as captives. 

Ibn Ezra's explanation is accepted by a number of modern scholars as well, who also find support in an Ugaritic cognate meaning "woman" (see Daat Mikra on Kohelet, and Kaddari's dictionary).

But there are many more suggestions for the meaning of shidah in Kohelet, as well as the etymology of the word. Here are a few:

• chests (Artscroll), coffers (New JPS)  - these translations (and others) are like Rashi in that they try to find consistency between shidah in Kohelet, and the appearances in later Rabbinic Hebrew. By translating the phrase as "chests and chests of them", it indicates an impressive quantity of the pleasures mentioned earlier, which they translate as "luxuries." That could indeed be fit for a king. As far as etymology, one theory that I've seen, connects shidah to shed שד, "breast." I think it is noteworthy that in English as well, "chest" can refer to both a box and to the breast, both holding something (in the latter case, the heart.)
• wine, cup bearer, goblets - These renderings are found in the ancient Septuagint, Peshitta and Vulgate translations. BDB says these may be related to the Aramaic שדא - "to pour out."
• musical instruments - this is the suggestion of Ralbag, who says they were shaped like boxes. This would fit with the previous phrase, "male and female singers."

Perhaps most the most audacious suggestion comes from Shadal, who suggests the verse in Kohelet should have a different vocalization, and says it should be read as sadeh שדה - "field." While that is certainly an interesting idea, I generally feel that such emendations should only be a last resort.

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metal and metzolah

When I was a kid, I realized that while I clearly knew what "metal" was, it was difficult to define. 

Metal is hard? Well, so is wood. Shiny? So is glass. Hard and shiny? Well, diamonds aren't metal. Can be bent? Well, I can't bend a penny, but I can bend plastic. Metals can have different colors (gold, silver, etc.), so that can't be it. But if you put two forks in front of me, one metal and one from another material, I could easily tell them apart.

I later learned that there are scientific definitions that identify what a metal is. Certain physical characteristics weren't evident to me at that age - like how well they conduct electricity or the high melting point. And at the most basic level, metals are certain elements in the periodic table, specifically those that lose electrons easily and can therefore form metallic bonds. 

Even reading about the meaning of metal in chemistry and physics today, I'm not sure how much I really understand. But my early exploration into the meaning of the word then has taught me a lesson that I certainly do carry with me now - the significance of semantics. While sometimes semantics is used to indicate pettiness, it's actually rather important. It's the branch of linguistics concerned with "meaning." In some ways, it's as much associated with philosophy as the study of language. We tend to think that words equal their meaning. And this can actually lead to intense debates, when one person thinks a word means one thing, and someone else thinks it means another. (Consider the debate about whether a hot dog is a sandwich.)

But not only are words generally not that precise, in many cases, they can't be. This is demonstrated by the paradox of the heap, in which it's not possible to define how many grains of sand are in a heap (does one less make it no longer a heap?)

So while many people find themselves arguing over the meaning or usage of a word, I don't find myself pulled into those debates - even though, as an amateur linguist, I'm frequently asked to adjudicate them. I certainly fall into the "descriptivist" camp, as I'm sure many readers of this site can tell. Words constantly change meaning, and so I'd much rather view the way words interact like an observer of a National Geographic nature video than someone concerned about the way things are "supposed to be."

And maybe that understanding started back when I thought about "metal," and how our understanding of that material was based much more on our perceptions than any precise definition. 

Now while that might make a nice introduction into the psychology of my linguistic approach, it's not really a Balashon post. So I was rather surprised, when I took a more recent look into the meaning of "metal", that it may have a Hebrew origin!

The Online Etymology Dictionary provides the following entry:

an undecomposable elementary substance having certain recognizable qualities (opacity, conductivity, plasticity, high specific gravity, etc.), mid-13c., from Old French metal "metal; material, substance, stuff" (12c.), from Latin metallum "metal, mineral; mine, quarry," from Greek metallon "metal, ore" (senses found only in post-classical texts, via the notion of "what is got by mining"); originally "mine, quarry-pit," probably a back-formation from metalleuein "to mine, to quarry," a word of unknown origin. 

Klein (in his CEDEL) picks up the "unknown origin" and gives his explanation:

It [metallon (= mine, quarry)] is perhaps a loan word from Hebrew metzolah מצולה, "depth"... Hebrew metzolah is related to tzula צולה, "ocean deep," and to Hebrew tzalal צלל, "he sank." 

The root tzalal - "to sink, plunge; to settle" also took on the sense of "to clear, clarify." (I assume from the sediment sinking to the bottom of the liquid.) That gives us the word tzalul - "clear, lucid."

It's nice to think that I can associate the Hebrew word for clarity with the English word metal, considering its meaning was anything but clear to me when I was young...

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chasmal and amber

The Hebrew word for "electricity" is chashmal חשמל. That is originally a biblical word, only appearing three times (all in the book of Yechezkel). Certainly at that time it didn't mean electricity. So how did the modern meaning come about?

These are the three verses:

וָאֵרֶא וְהִנֵּה רוּחַ סְעָרָה בָּאָה מִן־הַצָּפוֹן עָנָן גָּדוֹל וְאֵשׁ מִתְלַקַּחַת וְנֹגַהּ לוֹ סָבִיב וּמִתּוֹכָהּ כְּעֵין הַחַשְׁמַל מִתּוֹךְ הָאֵשׁ׃

I looked, and lo, a stormy wind came sweeping out of the north—a huge cloud and flashing fire, surrounded by a radiance; and in the center of it, in the center of the fire, a gleam as of amber. (1:4)

וָאֵרֶא כְּעֵין חַשְׁמַל כְּמַרְאֵה־אֵשׁ בֵּית־לָהּ סָבִיב מִמַּרְאֵה מָתְנָיו וּלְמָעְלָה וּמִמַּרְאֵה מָתְנָיו וּלְמַטָּה רָאִיתִי כְּמַרְאֵה־אֵשׁ וְנֹגַהּ לוֹ סָבִיב׃

From what appeared as his loins up, I saw a gleam as of amber—what looked like a fire encased in a frame; and from what appeared as his loins down, I saw what looked like fire. There was a radiance all about him. (1:27)

וָאֶרְאֶה וְהִנֵּה דְמוּת כְּמַרְאֵה־אֵשׁ מִמַּרְאֵה מָתְנָיו וּלְמַטָּה אֵשׁ וּמִמָּתְנָיו וּלְמַעְלָה כְּמַרְאֵה־זֹהַר כְּעֵין הַחַשְׁמַלָה׃

As I looked, there was a figure that had the appearance of fire: from what appeared as his loins down, [he was] fire; and from his loins up, his appearance was resplendent and had the color of amber. (8:2)

In all three of these verses the word hashmal is translated as "amber." This is based on the ancient Greek translation, the Septuagint, which used the Greek word elektron, meaning "amber." This tradition is in contrast to one found in the Talmud (Hagiga 13a-b), which says that chashmal is a kind of angel. In any case, since the visions are described as being "like" chashmal or having the color of chashmal, we can't conclusively say what it was from these verses, although it was likely something particularly radiant. The Akkadian cognate, elmesu, according to Tawil, refers to a "precious stone with the characteristic sparkle and brilliancy of fire."

Elektron (electrum in Latin) referred to an alloy of gold and silver. The same word was also used to refer to amber (the tree resin), because of the similar color. Rubbing amber gives an electrical charge, and so when the phenomenon of electricity was defined, the scientists turned to the Greek and Latin terms for amber to coin the word "electric."

The Hebrew poet Judah Leib Gordon followed the same logic around 1880, when he suggested to use chashmal to refer to electricity as well. 

Due to the rabbinic association of chashmal with angels, and the esoteric nature of Yechezkel's prophecy, there were many who opposed this secular use of chashmal.  (An alternate suggestion at the time was bazak -בזק "lightning.") But as we've discovered many times over the years, language has a power of its own, and chashmal is universally used in Hebrew today to refer to electricity.

And if you're curious, modern Hebrew has a different word to refer to "amber" - ענבר inbar. This word is borrowed from the Arabic anbar, as is the English word "amber." (However, as discussed here, it first entered Hebrew via European languages, and was spelled אמברא or אמבער, and only later began to be spelled ענבר to match the original Arabic.)  The etymology of anbar is unclear. Some say that the Arabic word comes from Persian, and others say that the similar Persian word comes from Arabic. Inbar is primarily heard today as a girl's name. It was in the top 50 girls names in the late 1980s and early 1990s, so as of this writing, you're most likely to find it used by women around 30 years old. 

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Britain

In a recent post, I discussed Semitic connections to places in Spain. Let's take a look now at another European country - Britain.

First of all, I'd like to dismiss any idea that Britain could come from "Brit-Ish." A great job of debunking this theory was done by Philologos in 2005:

Rabbi Samuel Silver of Boca Raton, Fla., has a short question: “Is ‘British’ related to brit?” 

I take it that this question is tongue in cheek. The claim that “British” comes from the Hebrew words brit (or “covenant,” familiar to many of you in its Ashkenazic form of bris, a circumcision) and ish (“man”) so that it means “man of the covenant” has been around for a long time — 200 years, in fact. It goes back to the beginnings of the British Israelites, a movement founded in England in the early 19th century to promulgate the idea that the British people hailed from the 10 (actually nine) Lost Tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel that disappeared from history after being carried off into exile by the Assyrians in the eighth century C.E. 

The British Israel movement was founded by an Englishman named Richard Brothers, who in 1800 published a book titled “Correct Account of the Invasion of England by the Saxons, Showing the English Nation To Be Descendants of the Lost Ten Tribes.”At its peak in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the movement had tens of thousands of followers. Among the many “proofs” offered by it, such as the claim that the Stone of Scone in Westminster Abbey was the very stone that served Jacob as a pillow on the night he dreamed his ladder of angels while fleeing from his brother, Esau, were a large number of supposed linguistic resemblances between English and biblical Hebrew. The British/brit ish equation was one of the foremost of these. 

Of course, any beginning Hebrew student could tell you that “man of the covenant” in Hebrew is ish brit and not brit ish, but the British Israelites were never a group to be deterred by even the simplest facts... 

Feel free to read the rest of his column for more explanation of why people insist on seeing patterns where the aren't any. This something I've discussed many times in Balashon, and perhaps even more in person. People frequently come up to me, knowing my interest in Hebrew etymology, and ask me if this Hebrew word is related to that English word. I certainly understand their curiosity, and even their emotional interest in finding such a bond, but in the end, we need to deal with evidence.

With all that in mind, I found a different theory about the etymology of Britain and a possible Semitic connection. I'll say from the outset that I'm skeptical of this one, but I'm not quite as ready to dismiss it out of hand.

Apparently it's been around for quite a while. Here's a summary from a geology website:

The Phoenicians, a now vanished pre-Roman civilisation in North Africa, traded directly with Cornwall. The name “Britain” comes from the Phoenician name “Baratanac”, meaning “Land of Tin”. The Greek historian Herodotus, who is the source for much of the little we know about the ancient world, describes how tin comes from the Cassiterides, ‘lands of tin’ that sat beyond Gaul (France).

The fact that tin mining took place in Britain in ancient times is not under dispute. And it's not preposterous to claim that the Phoenicians sailed to Britain. The only question is whether that particular etymology is reasonable and has any evidence.

 Let's look at the etymology itself. It took me some time, but I believe I have managed to dissect baratanac into two Semitic words that could give us Land of Tin.

First is barat. I think that this theory likely connects it to a cognate of the Hebrew word bar בר, which I've discussed here. Klein provides this entry, which makes it a reasonable candidate:

open field (a hapax legomenon in the Bible, occurring Job 39:4). [cp. BAram. בָּרָא, JAram. בָּרָא, בַּר (= open field), Syr. בָּרָא (= open field), Aram.–Syr. בּוּר (= to lie uncultivated), Arab. barr (= open country, inland, continent), Akka. barru, bāru (= open country).] 

And what about anac? This has a cognate in the Hebrew anakh אנך, found in Amos 7:7-8. While many translate it there as "lead" (or the synonymous "plumb"), there's good evidence that "tin" is a better translation. For example, there already is a Hebrew word for lead - oferet עופרת. And in the Akkadian cognate annaku, it clearly means "tin."

So it looks nice. Does it hold water? Most people say no (including a comment accepted by that geology website above). The most common etymology says it comes from a word meaning "tattooed people." Here's the Online Etymology Dictionary for Briton:

c. 1200, "a Celtic native of the British Isles," from Anglo-French Bretun, from Latin Brittonem (nominative Britto, misspelled Brito in MSS) "a member of the tribe of the Britons," from *Britt-os, the Celtic name of the Celtic inhabitants of Britain and southern Scotland before the 5c. Anglo-Saxon invasion drove them into Wales, Cornwall, and a few other corners. In 4c. B.C.E. Greek they are recorded as Prittanoi, which is said to mean "tattooed people." 

In response, those who claim a Phoenician connection point out that tattoos weren't unique to Britain at that time. And they provide other sources of evidence against other counter-claims. Read here and here for more extensive discussion.

Where am I at the end of all of this? Unconvinced. Maybe that's a sign of my lack of knowledge - I admit that I haven't researched this as extensively as a confident conclusion would demand. But I think it's also due to a feeling that many on both sides have an interest in a particular outcome. There are those that wanted to prove a connection between Britain and the biblical lands for religious reasons. Others rejected any possibility of such a connection (even if the etymology itself didn't hold up) for their own reasons, not all of which are purely academic.

But actually, being unconvinced is fine. It means that people will continue to study this question (and others), and through that effort come up with unforeseen discoveries. As a lover of language, I couldn't ask for anything more.

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tzofeh and tzipui

The Hebrew root צפה has two different meanings.

One means "to look, observe, keep watch, expect", and gives us such words as:

• tzafui צפוי - "foreseen"
• tzofeh צופה - "scout"
• mitzpeh מצפה - "lookout, observatory"

The other meaning of צפה is "to coat, to cover, to overlay." Tzipui ציפוי means "covering, coating, glaze."

Is there any connection between the two meanings?

Klein doesn't indicate any. He provides two distinct etymologies. For the meaning "to look", he writes:

JAram. צְפֵי, אִצְטֽפֵי (= he looked out), Ethiop. tasafawa (= he hoped), New Punic צפא (= seer). cp. also Akka. ṣubbu (= to look at).

And for the meaning "to cover", he simply notes:

JAram. צִפָּא (= laying over, covering).

Not too much to go on there, but certainly no connection is offered. To find some possible theories, we're going to need to go to older dictionaries. Since linguistics was not as developed when they were written, these suggestions are much more speculative. But since there is nothing even in Klein's theory that precludes a connection (like the two roots having clearly distinct origins), it is interesting to read their theories.

Steinberg, in his Milon HaTanach, seems to indicate that the original meaning of the root was "to cover", and the secondary meaning, "to observe", came from the sense "to put one's eye on". If this is the case, perhaps it follows a similar development as the English word "cover", which earlier meant "to put something over something else" and later, in the field of journalism, came to mean "to investigate."

Gesenius says the root means "to shine, to be bright", based on an Arabic cognate. From this, he writes, the meaning "to look out, to view" properly means "to enlighten with the eyes." And he claims that the original meaning of "to cover" was "to overlay with gold or silver", i.e. to make splendid. (Notably, the BDB, which is built on Gesenius, does not mention this theory.)

Jastrow has a similar theory. He also says the original meaning was "to shine." While he doesn't explain the connection between "to shine" and "to look" (I assume it has something to do with light), like Gesenius, he says that "to cover" originally meant "to cover with shining plate."

Finally, Tur Sinai, in a note on Ben Yehuda's entry for the meaning of "to overlay" writes that perhaps this root doesn't mean "to cover" at all, but rather to purify and to improve - "to ennoble" in his words. He then says that this would make the root cognate with an Arabic root צפי meaning "to purify", which is related to another Arabic root צפא, meaning "was pure and clear." If this is the case, Tur Sinai notes, it could be connected to the other Hebrew root, meaning "to see" - which would properly mean "to see clearly." In any case, he summarizes, tzipui in Biblical Hebrew never means to simply cover, but to cover with some better material. 

So did I cover everything?

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kesef and kisufim

The Hebrew word kesef כסף - "silver" or "money" and kisufim כיסופים - "longing", share the same root. What is the connection between the the two?

According to most scholars, both words derive from an earlier root meaning "white" or "pale".

For example, Klein, in his entry for the verb כסף - "to long for", writes:

Aram. כְּסַף (was pale, was white; whence ‘was white for shame’, ‘was ashamed’), Arab. kasapha (= was colorless, was obscured, was eclipsed — said of the sun or the moon).

As Stahl writes, both shame and yearning cause a person to become pale.

And Klein continues in his entry for kesef  - "silver":

Related to Phoen. כסף, BAram. and Aram. כְּסַף, כַּסֽפָּא, Syr. כֻּסְפָּא, Ugar. ksp, Akka. kaspu. These words prob. derive from כסף and lit. mean ‘the pale metal’.

In his concordance, Even Shoshan lists three meanings for kesef, seemingly in the order the senses developed:

1) the metal silver, which is the most frequent use of kesef in the Bible
2) an abbreviation of shekel kesef  שקל כסף - "a weight of silver", which represents a particular value of silver, based on a standard weight
3) price, which only appears three times in the Bible. This sense is not connected to silver at all and developed into the common meaning today, "money."


One other word that may derive from this early meaning "white" is Caspian, as in the Caspian Sea. The Online Etymology Dictionary has this entry:

Caspian (adj.)  of or pertaining to the great inland sea of central Asia, 1580s, from Latin Caspius, from Greek Kaspios, named for native people who lived on its shores (but who were said to be originally from the Caucasus), Latin Caspii, from a native self-designation, perhaps literally "white."

This site theorizes that the Semitic word may have come from the Sumerians, and from Mesopotamia, the word spread to the Caucasus.

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kuf

The 19th letter of the Hebrew alphabet is kuf, and there about as many ways to spell it in English (kuf / kof / kuph / koph / qof / qoph / qop / quph ) as there are suggestions for the original meaning:

• monkey
• eye of a needle (Klein)
  
• container
• knot
• circular motion
• revolving sun

While I always thought the letter came from kof קוף - monkey, that doesn't seem to be the case. The word kof is not originally Hebrew, and kofim weren't indigenous to the land:

These animals are mentioned in I Kings, x. 22, and the parallel passage in II Chron. ix. 21, as having been brought, with gold, silver, ivory, and peacocks, by ships of Tarshish from Ophir (compare II Chron. viii. 18). The Hebrew name kof is a loan-word from the Tamil kapi, from which indeed the Teutonic ape is also a loan with the loss of the guttural, so that the Hebrew and the English words are identical. In Egyptian the form gôfë occurs. The Indian origin of the name has been used to identify Ophir with Abhira at the mouth of the Indus (see Vinson, "Revue de Philologie," iii.). The Assyrians, however, were acquainted with Apes, which were brought to them as tribute. Apes are not now and almost certainly never were either indigenous to Palestine or acclimatized there.

As far as the other explanations, they seem to be connected to the Hebrew roots קוף and נקף - meaning "to go around", and the origins of such words as tekufa תקופה - "revolution, season", and hakafa הקפה - "encircling, surrounding".

As we've seen before, kuf can alternate with kaf, chet and gimel.

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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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canyon

In 1986, when developer David Azrieli built Israel's first mall, he also coined the catchy name: קניון - kanyon (or kanion or canion.) It is a combination of kniya קניה (shopping) and chanyon חניון (parking place) - both two major draws for a mall. I'm sure it also had the allure of a foreign word, sounding like the English word "canyon". (In fact, today one of Israel's largest malls is the Grand Kanyon in Haifa). I wonder, however, if he realized the Semitic roots of "canyon" when he came up with the term.

The English word canyon was borrowed from the Spanish cañon, which meant "a pipe, tube, gorge". The Spanish word derived from the Latin canna, and earlier the Greek kanna, meaning "reed". Many English words derive from either the Greek or Latin, including canister, cannon, canon, caramel, can, canal, cane, channel, canasta and canneloni.

The Greek kanna derived from the Semitic word (maybe Hebrew?) for reed - קנה kaneh. According to Klein, kaneh has many meanings: stalk, reed, cane, beam of scales, shaft of lampstand, arm of lampstand, length of a reed, and in later Hebrew - windpipe.

One of the interesting meanings is "beam of scales". In Yechezkel 40:3 we read of וּקְנֵה הַמִּדָּה - a "measuring rod" -- knei mida has the meaning in modern Hebrew of "criterion" or "scale". In the continuation of the chapter we see Yechezkel use kaneh as a measurement for building.

Kaneh was used for another type of measurement in Yeshayahu 46:6 - וְכֶסֶף בַּקָּנֶה יִשְׁקֹלוּ -- "and weigh out silver on the beam [of the balance]". From here Klein writes that some scholars say that the meaning of קנה - "to buy" comes from kaneh as well. He points out that there is a similar sense development in Aramaic, where זבן - "he bought" is probably borrowed from the Akkadian zibanitu - "balance, pair of scales". Yeshayahu makes a play on words using the double (and perhaps connected meanings) in 43:24 - לֹא-קָנִיתָ לִּי בַכֶּסֶף קָנֶה -- "You have not bought me fragrant reed with money".

So we can see that David Azrieli certainly had historical basis to make a play on words with canyon and kanah...

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