Two Hebrew words that seem to have similar roots, but very different meanings are rahut רהוט - "fluent" and rahit רהיט - "furniture" (as in a piece of furniture, the general term for furniture is rihut ריהוט).
Let's look at rahut first. This derives from the Aramaic root רהט, meaning "to run", and it's cognate with the Hebrew equivalent - רוץ. (The letters tzade and tet can switch between Hebrew and Aramaic, as can also be seen in the words tzel צל - "shade" and טלל - "to overshadow", the root of talit טלית). From the meaning "to run", we also get "to flow". This meaning appears in the word rahat רהט meaning "watering trough" in Bereshit 30:38,41 and Shemot 2:16, as well as the word rahut, which is first found in Medieval Hebrew (fluent and flow are related in English as well).
The story of rahit is less clear. It only appears once in the Tanach, in Shir HaShirim 1:17
קֹרוֹת בָּתֵּינוּ אֲרָזִים רַהִיטֵנוּ בְּרוֹתִים
"Cedars are the beams of our house, our rafters (rahiteinu) are cypresses"
Rahit as "rafter" appears in Talmudic Hebrew as well, but only in modern times did the meaning change to "furniture." Why?
In this article (and here in Hebrew), Elon Gilad writes that the synonym used in the verse, kora קורה - "beam" had become much more popular, and so rahit was in danger of being forgotten. So Eliezer Ben-Yehuda rescued the word for the concept of "furniture", which was no longer an item just for the rich. He was influenced by the Arabic word rihat, which had a similar meaning. Stahl adds that in the Talmud we find the phrase רהיטי ביתו - rihitei beito, which then meant "the rafters of his house", but the early writers of modern Hebrew would find that an appropriate phrase for various articles used in the house.
The only question that remains is, are the two terms related? Klein doesn't say so, but there are some sources that hint to a possibility. The Daat Mikra on Bereshit 30:38 points out that the troughs were made of korot (beams), but doesn't actually say that this indicates a connection between rahat and rahit. Steinberg, in Milon HaTanach, does say they derive from the same root, but doesn't explain how. Similarly, in this more recent book a connection is made, but I don't quite understand (other than an Aramaic connection).
The best citation I could find that does connect the terms is the BDB, which defines rafters as "strips running between beams." We find that usage in English as well, for a "runner" can also mean something spanning some distance, as in the runners of a sled or a carpet spanning a hallway.
Not long ago, on Purim, we read Megilat Esther, and in the megila appears the word pitgam פתגם. The word also appears in other late biblical books such as Kohelet, Ezra and Daniel. In Biblical Hebrew the word means "edict" or "decree", but in modern Hebrew the sense is less strict, and means "idiom" or "proverb".
What is the etymology of the word? Klein mentions Aramaic and Syriac cognates pitgama פתגמא meaning "word, command", and writes that they are all
borrowed from Persian. Compare Old Persian pratigama, Persian *patgam, which properly mean 'that which has come to, that which has arrived'
Since Persian is an Indo-European language, I was curious if there were any cognates in English. This site and this book suggest that patgam is cognate with the Greek pthegma which means "(spoken) word", and is found in the English word apophthegm, which more commonly appears in American English as apothegm - meaning "pithy saying" - nearly an identical meaning to the modern sense of pitgam in Hebrew. (I don't have evidence that the Greek sense influenced the modern meaning, but on the other hand, I don't know why there was a change from the Biblical - and Rabbinic - meanings to the modern one).
The Online Etymology Dictionary has this etymology for apothegm:
from Greek apophthegma "terse, pointed saying," literally "something clearly spoken," from apophthengesthai "to speak one's opinion plainly," from apo- "from" + phthengesthai "to utter."
Another word on that site with a common origin is diphthong:
late 15c., from Middle French diphthongue, from Late Latin diphthongus, from Greek diphthongos "having two sounds," from di- "double" + phthongos "sound, voice," related to phthengesthai "utter, speak loudly."
We've seen the concept of diphthong on Balashon before, even though I didn't use the official term, when we discussed the origins of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The letter "bet" derives from the word bayit בית (house). Some locations in ancient Israel pronounced words with a diphthong - bayit, yayin, zayit and others without - bet, yen, zet. The versions without the diphthong are preserved such cases as the letter "bet" and in the semichut form.
Is there a connection between the words sipuk סיפוק - "satisfaction" and safek ספק - "doubt"? They both appear to have the same root, but no obvious connection springs to mind. Let's take a closer look.
If we look in the Tanach, we notice two things. First of all, the root appears also with the letter sin - שפק. (By Rabbinic Hebrew, however, we only see it with a samech.) Secondly, there is a third meaning - "to strike" or "to clap (hands)". In fact, this meaning is the most common one found (even though it is almost never used in modern Hebrew). According to Even-Shoshan's concordance, it accounts for all seven times the root ספק appears in the Tanach.
Even-Shoshan claims that the root שפק means "to satisfy" three times - twice as a verb (Melachim I 20:10, Yeshaya 2:6) and once as a noun (Iyov 20:22). In modern Hebrew we find many uses of ספק meaning "to be sufficient, to suffice". The piel form - sipek סיפק can mean both "to satisfy" and "to supply". The hifil form hispik הספיק can also mean "to supply", but also can mean "to be sufficient, adequate, enough" and " to enable, to succeed". So if I write הספקתי לכתוב hispakti l'khtov - that means "I succeeded in writing" (usually within a desired period of time). The hitpael form הסתפק histapek means "to be satisfied, content". And of course the exclamation מספיק maspik - means "enough!".
What about safek meaning doubt? It appears frequently from Rabbinic Hebrew onwards, but it's not clear if it is found in Biblical Hebrew as well. The one verse that might have that usage is Iyov 36:18. The verse says כִּי-חֵמָה פֶּן-יְסִיתְךָ בְסָפֶק (this is the form in the Aleppo and Leningrad codices, but many printed variants have בשפק). The Koren Tanach translates the word v'safek using the sense of clapping hands:
"But beware of wrath, lest he take thee away with his clenched fist"
The New JPS translation connects the word to the meaning "to satisfy":
"Let anger at his affluence not mislead you"
A third possibility, that it means "doubt" is mentioned by a number of scholars - Even Shoshan in his concordance (although he does follow this up with a question mark), Klein in his dictionary (quoting "some scholars") and in the notes to Ben Yehuda's dictionary which mentions translators and commentators that explain the word as "doubt or hesitation". Aside from the Malbim (who I doubt they were referring to), I was unable to find which translations give this explanation for safek.
Now back to my original question - do these roots have any connection? Klein does not connect them at all, and even Steinberg in his Milon HaTanach, who frequently makes clever, if not convincing, connections between similar roots, doesn't connect the meanings "satisfy" and "doubt". (He does, however, say that the sense "to strike" and "satisfy, abundance" both derive from a sense meaning "to make a lot of noise" - applying to the sound of the striking, as well as the noise from a home with much wealth.)
I was surprised, however, to find that Even-Shoshan in his dictionary did make a connection. Regarding safek meaning "doubt", he says that perhaps it comes from an earlier sense meaning "bound" - in other words, a thing in doubt is "bound up" until it is solved. This sense of "bound" is found in Talmudic Hebrew, for example in the Mishna (Para 12:1 - although Kehati there says the word has the sense of "adequate"). Even-Shoshan then writes the meaning "to join, attach" is related to the meaning "to suffice" (as does Klein). They don't explain why - but perhaps when you supply something to a person, or they have a sufficient amount, it is as if that thing is attached to them.
Are you satisfied that the words are related? I'm in doubt...
The word "frank" (or its cognates) is an interesting one. All over the world, it refers to Westerners (as viewed by locals), but in Israeli slang, it's a derogatory term for Sephardic / Mizrahi Jews (as used by Ashkenazim). How did this happen?
According to this Philologos post, and this Language Hat post, the French were the ones leading the initial Crusades, and so they became known as the standard European foreigner. Philologos mentions the following cognates in many languages - all over the world:
Greek frangos, “Westerner”; Turkish frenk, “European” (frengi in Turkish means syphilis, for which the Turks had Europe to thank); Syriac frang, “European”; Persian ferang, ditto; Amharic frenj, “White Man”; southern Indian farangi or pirangi, “European” or “White Man”; Thai farang, ditto; Cambodian barang, ditto; Vietnamese pha-lang-xa, ditto; Malaysian ferringi, ditto; Indonesian barang, goods sold by a foreign trader; Samoan papalangi, “foreigner.” (Other derivations for papalangi, however, also have been given.)
In fact, the name might even extend beyond our planet. He mentions the Ferengi of Star Trek, whose name might have the same source. (We've seen Star Trek here before).
In Hebrew slang, the term franji פרנג'י means "to dress fancily, in a European style". But this phrase is not in common use today (in fact, I'm not sure if I've ever heard it myself). However, the pejorative frank (actually better spelled frenk), which sometimes in Hebrew is still spelled in the Yiddish style פרענק instead of the Hebrew פרנק, is still heard (if not in polite company).
Why in this case are the Ashkenazi westerners calling the "local" Sephardim by this term? Ruvik Rosenthal writes here that the usage derives from the Spanish word "Francos", which had the same meaning we've seen before - Western Europeans as viewed by people in the East. In this case it referred to Sephardic Jews who migrated to the land of Israel from Spain and the Balkans. The local Jews referred to them as Europeans, and when the Ashkenazi Jews immigrated to Israel, they referred to all Sephardim as "frenks" - and the sense became much more insulting.
A different form of the root פרנק, which is much more positive, but unrelated to the modern use is found in the midrash. For example in Midrash Tanaim on Devarim 32:2 it says that the words of Torah are מעדנים and מפרנקים - "refreshing" and "pampering". However this root is simply an expansion of the root פנק - also meaning "to spoil, pamper", and the Midrash Sifrei on the same verse uses מפנקים instead of מפרנקים. The root פנק appears once in the Bible, in Mishlei 29:21 - מְפַנֵּק מִנֹּעַר עַבְדּוֹ - "a slave pampered from youth". In Modern Hebrew we see the word pinuk פינוק with both the positive connotation of "pampering" and the negative connotation of "spoiling". Like with the previous meaning, what can be fancy and pleasant to some, can be overindulgent and arrogant to others...
Italian regional (northern) articiocco (16th cent.), apparently < Spanish alcarchofa (1492; now usually alcachofa ) or its etymon Spanish Arabic al-ḵaršūfa < al- the + ḵaršūfa , regional variant (also ḵaršafa , ḵuršūfa ) of classical Arabic ḥaršafa (compare modern standard Arabic ḵuršūfa ), singular form corresponding to ḥaršaf , collective noun (compare modern standard Arabic ḵuršūf ), further etymology unknown.
Despite the ominous "further etymology unknown", I got curious - could there be a connection to a Hebrew word?
First of all, I should point out that the Jerusalem artichoke has nothing to do with Jerusalem. It gets its name from an alteration of the Italian girasole, meaning sunflower. (They are also called "sunchokes" - which is my preferred name for them.)
But what about the "original" artichoke? They do appear in Jewish tradition - potentially very far back. After Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, God cursed them saying they would eat "thorns and thistles" קוֹץ וְדַרְדַּר - kotz and dardar. The midrash (Bereshit Rabba 20:10) identifies them with kinras קינרס and akavit עכבית, but isn't sure which Biblical word matches with which Talmudic one. The gemara in Beitza (34a) points out that they both require effort before they are edible, and Rashi on the verse in Bereshit explains that this is the nature of the curse.
Kinras iscognate with the Latin word cynara - the name of the genus, and the Greek kynára, which may be named for the island Kinaros, or maybe the island is named for the plant. Avshalom Kor here proposes an interesting theory that the Kinneret lake may be named for the artichokes that grew on its shore, and that the Greeks actually borrowed a Semitic word, כינר kinar, that was later reintroduced to Hebrew in Talmudic times as kinras. .Kinras and akavit refer to artichokes and the related cardoon, both of which do require significant preparation to eat. In fact, the Rambam in his commentary on the Mishna (Uktzin 1:6), which mentions kinras (in some versions as kunras קונרס and even as kundas קונדס, but that seems to be a typographical error), gives the Arabic version as אלחרשף, and says that in the west, it is known as אלכ'רשף. These match up with the etymologies we saw above for artichoke.
In Modern Hebrew the official word for artichoke is churshaf (or charshof) חרשף (derived from the Arabic, and coined in the Middle Ages), but I've only seen "artichoke" ארטישוק used.
So while we can trace the concept of artichoke back to earlier periods, we still haven't answered my question about any Semitic cognates to harsaf. I have a possible lead, but I'm really not sure - and I welcome your input.
hharshaf : fish scales [Akk arsuppu (carp)] Per charshaf borrowed from Ara
The Concise Dictionary of Akkadian has a similar entry, saying the Akkadian arsuppu and ersuppu can mean carp or carp scales, einkorn (wheat) or a kind of apple. (You can see the full entry here, but I couldn't find anything more helpful).
So could the original word refer to an item with scales or thorns? Both of those could apply to the artichoke.
And if that's the case - could this also be the origin of a Hebrew word - kartzef קרצף - "to scrape or scratch"? Klein says that it's related to an Aramaic root with the same spelling, but the ultimate etymology is unknown.
And here's where it gets a little strange. There's a kind of thistle, the "blessed thistle", known in Hebrew as akartzaf mevorach קרצף מבורך. I haven't been able to find out where or how this term entered Hebrew (in fact, it's not in any of my dictionaries). But perhaps this too makes a connection between kartzaf and artichoke?
And one more possible theory. The Online Etymology Dictionary gives the following origin of cardoon:
1610s, from French cardon, from Provençal cardon, properly "thistle," from Late latin cardonem (nominative cardo "thistle," related to Latin carduus "thistle, artichoke"
And then going further back, in the entry for "harsh":
originally of texture, "hairy," 1530s, probably from Middle English harske "rough, coarse, sour" (c. 1300), a northern word of Scandinavian origin (compare Danish and Norwegian harsk "rancid, rank"), related to Middle Low German harsch "rough, raw," German harst "a rake;" perhaps from PIE root *kars- "to scrape, scratch, rub, card" (cognates: Lithuanian karsiu "to comb," Old Church Slavonic krasta, Russian korosta "to itch," Latin carduus "thistle," Sanskrit kasati "rubs, scratches").
So could this Indo-European root, *kars be related to kartzaf, which shares a meaning and a similar sound - and could either or both of them be related to the Arabic and Akkadian words we've found?
I realized that in my recent post on atarandasher, I left out an interesting cognate. I quoted Klein's etymology for the word osher אושר - "happiness":
Perhaps related to Ugaritic ushr (= happiness), Arabic yasara (= was easy), yassara ( =made easy, prospered)
The English word "hazard" may well derive from that same Arabic yasara. How so?
Klein himself does not make the connection. In his Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, he has the following entry for "hazard":
1) a game played with dice; 2) chance; 3) risk. Old French (= French) hasard, from Spanish azar, 'unfortunate throw at dice, unforeseen accident', usually derived from Arabic al-zahr (pronounced az-zahr), 'the die'. This derivation is rightly doubted by most lexicographers (see e.g. Devic's Supplement to Littre's Dictionnaire de la langue francaise, s.v. hasard, and Skeat's Etymological Dictionary, s.v. hazard), owing to the fact that the word zahr does not occur in the dictionaries of Classical Arabic. According to my opinion Spanish azar derives from Arabic yasara, 'he played at dice'; z is the regular Spanish equivalent of Arabic s. The d in Old French hasard (whence English hazard) is due to a confusion of the ending -ar with suffix -ard.
So we see here that the Arabic word yasara can mean both "was easy" (or prospered) and "played at dice." What possible connection could there be between the two?
Yasara: affluence because maisir brings about profit; Yusr: convenience, ease. Maisir is so termed because it is a means of making money without toil and exertion
(For further discussion of the Arabic root, see this post).
So we have an interesting development here. In Arabic, the games of dice and maisir were associated with ease - the element of chance provided an easy way of making money (and the echo of the Hebrew word osher can still be heard). But when the word entered European languages, it took a darker turn. Hazard went from a game of chance, to chance in general, to specifically a chance of harm or risk. I guess it all depends on how the die falls...
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
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!
What is the origin of the word apikoros (or apikorus / epikoros ) אפיקורוס, meaning "heretic"? It refers to the Greek philosopher Epicurus, and his school of thought, Epicureanism. While many ideas in Greek philosophy were in conflict with the views of Rabbinic Judaism, the Epicurean ideas, which denied eternity of the soul and the existence of God (or at least gods that were involved with what happens on earth), were particularly abhorrent to the rabbis of the post-Biblical period. So Epicurus for them became a prototype of all heretics and atheists. We find the words epicure and epicurean in English as well, meaning "pleasure loving", and particularly associated with a love of good food. The Online Etymology Dictionary provides the following entry:
late 14c., "follower of Epicurus," from Latinized form of Greek Epicouros (341-270 B.C.E.), Athenian philosopher who taught that pleasure is the highest good and identified virtue as the greatest pleasure; the first lesson recalled, the second forgotten, and the name used pejoratively for "one who gives himself up to sensual pleasure" (1560s), especially "glutton, sybarite" (1774). Epicurus's school was opposed by the stoics, who first gave his name a reproachful sense. Non-pejorative meaning "one who cultivates refined taste in food and drink" is from 1580s.
This is the widely accepted etymology for apikorus (more on the connection to Epicurus in this Philologos column).
The Rambam, however, in his commentary to the Mishna (Sanhedrin 10:1), gives a different etymology. Based on Talmudic sources (such as Sanhedrin 38b), he says it comes from the root פקר, meaning "to abandon" (found in the word hefker הפקר - "abandoned"). He wrote this commentary early in life, and it appears that perhaps that at the time he was not familiar with the Greek philosopher. However, much later in life, when he wrote The Guide for the Perplexed, he mentions Epicurus by name a number of times (1:73, 2:13, 3:17). So one theory is that maybe he would have reconsidered his original etymology after his subsequent exposure to philosophic sources.
However, a connection between apikoros and hefker may likely exist - just in the other direction. The root פקר is not found in Biblical Hebrew, first appearing in Talmudic sources. Scholars have a number of theories as to the origin of this root, and Ben Yehuda writes in his dictionary that it might not be just one source, but rather multiple influences. (For an extensive discussion of the various theories, see this Hebrew article by Prof. Shamma Friedman, with an English summary at the end.)
One theory is that this might be a metathesis of the root פרק, meaning "to break up, divide, tear away" (for example in the word perek פרק, as we discussed here). Klein quotes the phrase "parak ol torah" פרק על תורה - "he threw off the yoke of the Torah" for comparison.
Another possibility is that the earlier form of the word was the similar sounding hevker הבקר, and this is found in a number of locations in the Mishna (e.g. Peah 6:1). The Ramban, in his commentary to Shemot 15:10 and Vayikra 19:20 notes this as well, also saying that the בקר root preceded the פקר one.
Within this approach, there are a number of suggestions to what the word originally meant. According to Tur-Sinai's note in Ben Yehuda's dictionary, hevker is related to bakar בקר - "cattle", and was so called because cattle would graze in abandoned or ownerless land, or as Friedman speculates, this goes back to a general association between cattle and property, as we saw here. Spieser is quoted in Friedman's article as saying that the origin may be an Akkadian root, baqarum, meaning "to restore property to its owner", which eventually extended to the sense of "relinquish property" in general. And Friedman himself points out that the related roots בקר/בקע/פקר/פקע all mean "to burst", which came to indicate transfer of something from one domain to another (Bialik expands on this idea here).
All of these approaches might help explain a word that only appears once in the Tanach - bikoret בִּקֹּרֶת (Vayikra 19:20). Levine, in his JPS commentary on Vayikra, translates the word as "indemnity" and writes that:
It is probably cognate with the Akkadian verb baqaru, "to make good on a claim, to indemnify." Biblical bikkoret is therefore related to mishnaic hevker, "property over which one has relinquished his claim." In our verse, the term bikkoret designates the actual payment imposed on the responsible party.
(For a further discussion of bikoret in that verse, see this post).
A final theory connects hefker to apikoros, claiming that the latter influenced the former - meaning a heretic who abandoned his religion.
At this point I'm not sure what to believe. The various theories are hefker - you can take whatever you like. And luckily you don't need to worry about being called an apikorus if you believe the wrong one...
Originally, the Hebrew rega רגע and Aramaic shaah שעה were synonymous - both meant "instant" or "moment". Rega appears over 20 times in the Tanach with that meaning, and sha'ah is found five times in the Aramaic section of the book of Daniel, as well as in the Aramaic translations of the biblical rega.
The etymology of rega is in dispute. The root רגע has two meanings. The more familiar one means "to be at rest", and is found in such words as ragua רגוע- "relaxed" and margia מרגיע - "calming". A second meaning is "to move, set in motion, disturb" (as in Yeshaya 31:34). Klein presents two possibilities as to the connection between the two meanings. Either they are related, with both sharing a common root meaning "to return" (there is a cognate Arabic word with that sense), so the first meaning literally means "returned to rest after wanderings" and the second meaning focuses on the "movement" found in returning. The second theory, which Klein prefers, says the two roots are not related, and the latter is related to two other Hebrew roots also meaning "to disturb" - רגש and רגז.
Along these lines, Klein mentions two theories of the etymology of rega:
Probably derived from רגע (= to move), and literally meaning 'a twinkling (of the eye)'. For sense development, compare Latin momentum (=movement, motion; short time, moment) from movere (=to move).
Some scholars also derive rega from רגע, but in the sense of Arabic raja'a (=he returned) and compare the phrase qabla 'an yartadda ilayka tarfuka 'in the twinkling of an eye, instantly' (literally: 'before your look returns to you')
This phrase "twinkling (or wink) of the eye" is found in Hebrew as well, also with the meaning "instant": הרף עין heref ayin.
As Hebrew progressed into its post-biblical phase, the original sense of both words was maintained in many usages, but with the growing field of science they each gained an additional meaning: a specific, measured, unit of time. A shaah was one twelfth of the time between sunrise and sunset (or sunset to sunrise), and is close to our modern sense of "hour". A rega was a small fraction of that time - according to the Talmud Yerushalmi (Berachot 1:1) it was either 1/56848 of a shaah (about 0.06 seconds), a heref ayin, the or the amount of time to say the word rega.
(Eliahu Netanel here quotes Rabbi Baruch Epstein in his book Baruch She'amar as saying that the expression "even one shaah" in the blessing "Asher Yatzar" can't be referring to the later meaning, 1/24 of the day, but must be the earlier sense of "instant".)
In the Middle Ages, the word dak דק replaced rega as the unit of time smaller than a shaah, with the meaning of "minute", one-sixtieth of an hour - again due to a need for more precise terms. The Hebrew adjective dak also means "thin, lean, small". Think of the dual meaning of "minute" in English - "small" and "1/60th of an hour". Klein gives the following etymology to dak as a unit of time:
Based on Arabic daqiqah (= minute) and influenced by Medieval Latin minuta, short for Latin pars minuta prima (literally: 'the first small part')
Around the same time, the Hebrew shniah שנייה came to mean the even smaller "second" (as in Latin and English - this is the second division of the hour, after the division into minutes). Rega returned to its earlier sense of "moment" (which, as in English, doesn't refer to a particular amount of time, although like regaonce did), however until recent generations was still occasionally used for "minute" as well. (Ben Yehuda criticized this usage, while others, such as Avineri, supported it, and said rega was even a better term than daka for minute. Ben Yehuda won that battle.)
In modern Hebrew dak was replaced with daka דקה. This article claims that perhaps this was from the influence of the endings of the Arabic daqiqah, Latin minuta, and Hebrew shaah. The same article goes on to say that the male forms of minute - rega and dak - apparently had enough influence on spoken Hebrew that even today the common way of saying the time has the minutes in the masculine form - for example, 5:55 would be spoken חמשה לשש - chamisha l'shesh (five [minutes] to six) instead of חמש לשש chamesh l'shesh (which would be proper if the first number referred to female dakot דקות). Some people find the current usage improper or grating (for example in the book Rega Shel Ivrit) but the article quoted above, by the Hebrew Language Academy, says the practice is so well established that it's not worth fighting.
Shaah still maintains in modern Hebrew its early sense of "instant" particularly in phrases such as otah shaah אותה שעה - "at the same time" (which doesn't mean "within the same hour"). However, in general it refers to our familiar "hour" - sixty minutes.
And continuing this trend of scientific progress, in the modern period a word was needed for the instrument used to measure and display time - the clock. (Already in the Mishna, Kelim 12:4, we find a term for a sundial - אבן שעות even shaot). As was common in the Haskala period of Hebrew (which preceded modern Hebrew), longer compound phrases were used, such as moreh shaot מורה שעות. In 1885, Yechiel Michael Pines (and not Ben-Yehuda as some mistakenly claim) coined the term shaon שעון (following the general trend of preferring shorter, one word neologisms). And despite the opposition of some - either because they preferred to use existing Hebrew words (as mentioned by Klausner), or they thought shaon was too similar to שאון shaon meaning "noise, tumult" (as mentioned by Avineri) - shaon became the modern Hebrew word for "clock". Avshalom Kor has a nice video about the history of the word here - enjoy!
My wife asked me if there is any connection between the English word "crash" and the Hebrew verb קרס - which means to "collapse", and can be used to refer to a computer when it crashes.
late 14c., crasschen "break in pieces;"
probably imitative. Meaning "break into a party, etc." is 1922. Slang
meaning "to sleep" dates from 1943; especially from 1965. Computing
sense is from 1973.
I think it's likely that the similar sound of the English word "crash" had some influence when Israelis were looking for a Hebrew verb to describe a computer or program that stopped working.
Today karas means "to collapse, to fall", but the original meaning was "to bend down, stoop." It referred to stooping very low, and was used in parallel with כרע - "to bow down". The only two places it is found in the Tanach is in Yeshaya 46:1-2, where it says כָּרַע בֵּל, קֹרֵס נְבוֹ - "Bel bowed down, Nevo stooped (karas)" and קָרְסוּ כָרְעוּ יַחְדָּו - "they stooped and bowed down together."
We do find a couple of other words used today that derive from the same root, meaning "bend". The word keres קרס means "hook", and is found in the description of the tabernacle in Shemot 26:6. I don't think it's used as frequently as the synonym vav וו, but we do see it in the Hebrew word for swastika - tzlav keres צלב קרס - "hooked cross".
Klein also connects the word for ankle, karsol קרסול . This is also a biblical word, found in Shmuel II 22:37 and Tehilim 18:37.
If "ankle" seems familiar, it's because we've discussed it before here. Take a look!
It's hard to believe, but today is ten years since my first post on Balashon. According to my official statistics (since May 2010, so I know there are many more since the start in 2006), I've had over 2.5 million visits, with the most popular post being "avuka and ptil" (no idea why). And while it's not so surprising that the top country of visitors to Balashon is the United States, I was not expecting to see China at number two, over Israel. Some of my posts have been rather short, and others have been quite long and detailed. There have been periods when I've written very frequently, and some long breaks without posting.
Even when I'm not writing as much as I'd like, I still love having Balashon to come back to. From your emails, and my research, I have a very long list of topics to write about, so I don't see any reason I can't continue this for years to come. I hope that you continue to enjoy visiting here as well.
Since it's ten years since I started this site, I thought a good word to write about would be atar אתר - "site". The word entered into post-biblical Hebrew from Aramaic, and meant "place" - a synonym with the biblical word makom מקום. But as we've seen many times before, instead of two words remaining synonyms, one ended up filling a linguistic vacuum. So instead of the more general "place", in Modern Hebrew atar was used for "site" - as in atar b'niya - אתר בנייה - "construction site", atar tayarut אתר תיירות - "tourist site" - or when it's used with no other word, today atar generally refers to a website. (Yaakov Etzion points out that this transition seems to have take place between 1948 and 1958, as the meaning "site" only appears in the latter year's Even-Shoshan dictionary.)
The root אתר is also used as a verb, and so the gerund itur איתור can either mean "localization", or more commonly, "locating". And if we go back to the Aramaic source, we find more Hebrew words that derive from atar. The phrase al atar על אתר - "on the spot" (literally "on the place") was eventually contracted (losing the guttural ayin as well) to "אלתר" as found in the form le'altar לאלתר - "at once". This was adopted into Modern Hebrew as "to improvise", and so iltur אילתור means "improvisation".
Another Aramaic contraction containing atar that is used today is the prefix batar בתר - "after, post", which originally was the term ba'atar באתר - literally "in the place of, that which came after something". We see it used in such phrases as batar-mikrai בתר-מקראי - "post-biblical".
If we go further back, we find that the Aramaic root אתר is cognate with the Hebrew אשר. That root is found in many words, and it's not entirely clear which are connected to atar. Let's take a look.
Klein provides three different, and perhaps distinct, entries for אשר.
The first has the meaning "to walk straight, to walk", and this is the one he connects with atar. He finds a number of additional Semitic cognates, including the Arabic 'ithr and Akkadian ashru, both meaning "place". In Biblical Hebrew we find the verb in forms meaning "he walked" or "he led" (e,g, Mishlei 9:6, Yeshaya 9:15), but they are rarely used in Hebrew today. Klein does, however, connect one extremely common word to this root: asher אשר - "which, that". He writes that "according to most scholars these words were originally nouns meaning 'trace, place'". He doesn't elaborate, but I assume this means that the word meant "of that place". From here we also get the word ka'asher כאשר - "when".
His second entry means "to be happy", and this is found in the words meushar מאושר - "happy" and osher אושר - "happiness". For the etymology he writes:
Perhaps related to Ugaritic ushr (= happiness), Arabic yasara (= was easy), yassara ( =made easy, prospered)
What's strange to me is that in his entry for yashar ישר - "straight", he says it is cognate with the Arabic yasara (= it was or became easy) as well. So if yasara is related to אשר meaning "happy" as well as yashar meaning "straight" - shouldn't the first meaning of אשר as "to walk straight" be connected with the second meaning "happy"? But perhaps that's just speculation on my part.
Klein's third entry doesn't seem to be connected at all to the first two. He defines it as "to strengthen, confirm" and writes that it is cognate with the root שרר, "was strong" which is the root of the word sherir שריר - "muscle". This root gives us ishur אישור - "approval", ishrur אישרור - "ratification" and probably ashrai אשראי - "credit".
So to sum up - thank you for giving me your approval and credit all these years - I was very happywhen working on the site (even if sometimes I had to improvise). I've benefited from your involvement, and I hope you've learned something as well. Ashreinu!
One of the few Hebrew words that most English speakers know is "kosher". When used to describe food, it means that it conforms to the regulations of Jewish dietary laws, and in the more general sense it can mean "legitimate, genuine, correct." The word kosher clearly comes from the Hebrew כשר kasher (the pronunciation and spelling kosher is from the Ashkenazic and Yiddish influence), but the Hebrew kasher and its associated words have many more meanings. Let's take a look.
As I've discussed before, I listen to a lot of podcasts. However, in that previous post I didn't mention one podcast that would be of particular interest to readers of Balashon. In each episode of the podcast StreetWise Hebrew, host Guy Sharett takes a Hebrew root, and shows its various forms and uses in Modern Hebrew, accompanied by clips from news broadcasts, commercials, songs and more. Each podcast is only 10-15 minutes, and it's great for both those learning Hebrew for the first time, as well as more veteran fans of the language (like me). I highly recommend it.
In his episode on the word kasher, Guy discusses many words that are related to that root. In addition to kasher - which, similar to "kosher" in English, also means "fit, valid, reliable" (besides its association with food), he also provides the following words:
kashir – Capable – כשיר kishurim – Qualifications – כישורים hechsher – “Kosherizing,” authorization – הכשר hachshara – “Kosherizing” meat; training – הכשרה lehachshir – To render something kosher, to train, to prepare, to authorize – להכשיר muchshar, muchesheret – Talented – מוכשר, מוכשרת kosher – Fitness, ability, capability – כושר
You should notice that all the words listed have something to do with either being fit, or preparing to make fit. Only a few of them have to do with food - and those that do are related to the preparation of the food, not the supervision. If you understand this, the term "kosher salt" will make more sense - it's not that this kind of salt is permitted according to Jewish law (all salt is), but that it is used in the preparation of meat, according to Jewish law.
Another interesting point here is that Hebrew also has the word "kosher", but it refers to physical fitness, not food you can eat. Probably a healthier approach...
One thing that Guy does not usually discuss is etymology. So let's look at the background to this root.
The root only appears a few times in the Tanach, mostly in the later books. Esther (8:5) has the adjective kasher, and Kohelet has the verb form twice (10:10, 11:6) as well as the related kisharon כשרון - "talent, skill" (2:21, 4:4, 5:10). The appearance in these books is generally attributed to an Aramaic influence where the word is commonly used, and Klein finds cognates in the Ugaritic ktr (=fit, suitable) and Akkadian kasharu (= to succeed).
Two other biblical words, which each appear only once in the Tanach, and may be related to the root are kosharot כושרות in Tehillim 68:7 whose meaning is unclear, and might mean "prosperity" (although the Radak and other say it might derive from the root קשר - "to bind"), and kishor כישור - "distaff " in Mishlei 31:19. Klein says that the etymology of kishor is uncertain, and the BDB suggests that perhaps the origin is in the root ישר - "to make straight".
Yaakov Etzion discusses the etymology of the root further in this post. He points out that kasher is used often in the Aramaic targumim of the Hebrew Tanach as a translation of yashar ישר - "right, just", and is found - in various forms - very frequently in Rabbinic Hebrew (which had much influence from Aramaic).
He focuses on the interesting word machshir מכשיר - which in Modern Hebrew means "tool, device, instrument". Guy didn't discuss it in his podcast. How is it related to the senses of "preparation" or "fitness"?
Jastrow defines the term as it appears in Talmudic Hebrew as "preparatory means, preliminary acts", and the eponymous tractate of Mishna meant "things which make an object fit for levitical uncleanness". (Etzion points out that we see from these examples and other similar ones that the root kasher is not always used to mean something prepared for a positive use).
As Hebrew began its renewal as a spoken language, machshir was adopted in a number of compound phrases (much more common in that period than now), but still maintaining the sense of things that are "preparatory". So Etzion gives the examples of machshirei seuda מכשירי סעודה as "things needed to prepare a meal" (like a tablecloth and silverware) and machshirei ketiva מכשירי כתיבה - "things needed for writing" (like pen and paper). But over time the sense of "preparatory, necessary" was dropped and it just became a word for tool, instrument (a synonym for keli כלי). So for example, machshirei chashmal מכשירי חשמל are electric devices, with no sense of "preparation" for electricity.
So I hope I've prepared you to use the root kasher properly. And now I need to go for a walk, listen to my podcasts, burn off all this kosher food I just ate, and get into kosher!
Let's take a look at the root פלל. It is appears both in the verb hitpalel התפלל - "prayed" and the adjective plili פלילי - "criminal". Is there any connection between the two?
Let's look at the latter sense first. The root פלל in this context originally meant "to judge", and we find this meaning a number of times in the Tanach (for example Shemot 21:22 and Shmuel I 2:25). From here developed the modern sense of criminal - someone (or something) that is judged.
Klein says that some scholars claim that this base originally meant "he cleft, split, decided" and is cognate with the Arabic falla - "he cut, broke". He points out that a similar sense development can be found both in the Hebrew root פסק which means both "split, divide" and "decide", and the English word "decide" itself, which derives from the Latin caedere, meaning "to cut".
What of the other meaning of פלל - "to pray"? Klein gives a few possible suggestions. One goes back to his derivation of the first meaning of פלל from "he cut", this meaning meant "he cut himself in worship." He says that a more probable explanation would connect this sense to a different root - נפל "to fall", and so it meant "to prostrate himself in prayer". However, his last suggestion connects the two meanings of "judge" and "pray", saying that the original meaning of this sense was "to invoke as a judge".
The noun form of this root - tefila תפילה - "prayer" and the associated tefilin תפילין (so called because they are worn in prayer - in the Torah they are calledtotafot) are easy derived from פלל. But why is the verb form hitpalel, in the reflexive, hitpael, form? That usually means something you do to yourself, such as hitlabsesh התלבש - "he dressed himself". However, prayer is directed to someone else - so why that form, and that form only?
There are a number of explanations for this as well.
Gesenius says that the hitpael form isn't always fully reflexive as I mentioned above, but can mean an "action less directly affecting the subject and describes it as performed with regard to or for oneself". So while we don't pray to ourselves, we pray for ourselves, and another example of this type of hitpael verb is hitnatzel התנצל - "apologize", where we apologize not to ourselves, but for ourselves.
This author suggests linking the meaning back to the earlier sense of "to judge" and gives this explanation (which fits the grammar in the previous suggestion): "to seek a judgment for oneself".
Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch, in his book Horeb, has a slightly different take on this, saying it means "to deliver an opinion about oneself, to judge oneself". While this explanation might be more on the level of drash, it may fit well with a suggestion in Ben Yehuda's dictionary, that the root פלל originally had a connotation of forming a covenant, and so the hitpael form reflects a sense of each side's responsibility towards the other.
I can't say which of any of these explanations is most convincing. However, it is important to distinguish between etymology and meaning. Just the meaning of words evolve over time, to reflect the understanding and usage of the speakers, so to does the concept of prayer itself. Our prayer today can include all of the various meaning described, and can therefore be a much richer experience.
A friend asked why the verb עולה oleh means both "to go up" and "to cost". Let's look at the various, but related, meanings of that root.
The most basic meaning of עלה is indeed, "to go up, ascend".
From here we get the noun aliya עליה - which can refer to someone being called up to the reading of the Torah, or moving "up" to the Land of Israel. This concept was first used in the Torah in describing travel from Egypt to Israel, later to describe the return of Jews from Babylon to Israel, and today all immigration to Israel is known as aliyah. (The proper phrase in Hebrew is oleh l'aretz, עולה לארץ, but as Philologos describes here, the more comfortable phrases in English - "go on aliya" or "make aliya" have made their mark on modern Hebrew, and so you more and more frequently hear in Hebrew oseh aliya עושה עליה.)
Other words deriving from that meaning include elyon עליון - "most high, supreme" and maalit מעלית - "elevator".
Klein suggests that the next meaning is "it sprang up, grew, shot forth". From this meaning he derives the etymology of the Hebrew word for "leaf" - aleh עלה.
The next sense is more metaphorical - "to rise, surpass, excel". This may be familiar from the Eshet Chayil song, originally from Mishlei, where the woman of valor is praised, "Many women have excelled, but you surpassed them (alit) all" - רַבּוֹת בָּנוֹת עָשׂוּ חָיִל וְאַתְּ עָלִית עַל-כֻּלָּנָה (Mishei 31:29). This sense is used commonly today in the word me'uleh מעולה - "excellent".
And from here we finally get to the answer to the question. In post-biblical Hebrew, we find a newer meaning - "was reckoned, counted in, considered." This is a development from the previous meaning, since something that excelled would be counted in and considered (for some reason this is bringing up painful memories of being chosen last in gym class in elementary school...). And because the price of something is how it is reckoned or considered, we get to the meaning "to cost".
So thanks for the question, Jenn, and I hope your aliya is excellent, and doesn't cost too much!
Reader Gavriel asked about the history and etymology of the word androlomusia אנדרולומוסיה (or אנדרלמוסיה) meaning "chaos, confusion, disorder".
Klein writes that the meaning of chaos and confusion is only from Modern Hebrew, whereas the original (i.e. post-biblical) meaning was "pestilence". He provides the following etymology:
Greek androlempsia, for androlepsia (=seizure of men in reprisal of the murder of a citizen abroad), compounded of aner, genitive andros (=man), and the stem of lambanein (=to take).
Andros as "man" should be very familiar as the root of words like android and anthropology, and the second half of the word, "-lepsia" also appears as "take, seize" in the word epilepsy, literally "a seizure". (Even-Shoshan proposes an alternate etymology: androloimos - "plague, annihilation". However, I have not been able to find any source for this, or even any mention of this Greek word anywhere).
The connection between Klein's definitions and etymology of androlomousia is somewhat confusing. First, what does pestilence have to do with androlepsy, and second, what do either have to do with confusion and chaos?
Regarding pestilence, I haven't found a source that explicitly describes andralomusia as such. It has a much more general sense in the midrashic sources that I've seen, such as this quote from Vayikra Rabba 23:
אמר רב שמלאי: כל מקום שאת מוצא בו זנות אנדרולומוסיא באה לעולם והורגת יפים ורעים. Rabbi Simlai said: every place where you find lewdness, androlomusia comes to the world, and kills the good and the bad.
This midrash is discussing the flood, and so isn't referring specifically to pestilence, but general disaster and catastrophe. The additional note of killing "the good and the bad", fits nicely with the concept of androlepsy, where citizens were seized (and killed) regardless of their guilt. This type of situation, whether the actual example of androlepsy, or the analogous divine punishments mentioned in the midrash, besides being horrific, was surely chaotic as well. So we can see how the word took on its more modern sense.
In current spoken Hebrew, androlomusia is not used very frequently. It's a bit antiquated - maybe even ostentatious. Israelis prefer the much shorter balagan בלגן. I hope this put an end to the confusion...
The modern Hebrew phrase le'asot chayim לעשות חיים literally means "to make [a] life", but has the sense of "to live it up" or "have a good time". According to Rosenthal, the phrase originates in the Yiddish מאכן ע לעבן - makhn a lebn, which also literally means "to make a life".
When I read that Yiddish phrase out loud, it sounded a lot like the English expression "to make a living". The English version is different than the Hebrew - it means to earn enough money to support oneself. And while all of the words are clearly English, to me it sounded like it could have been influenced by Yiddish, like the phrases "go figure" or "get lost". It has a real Yiddish ring to it, like in this joke:
Mr. Cohen falls and is laying in the road. A lady gets a pillow from her car and lays it under his head until the ambulance arrives.
"Are you comfortable?" she asks.
"Ah vell," he says "I make a living."
However, the phrase "make a living" in English predates Yiddish influence. The American Heritage Idioms Dictionary says it first appears in English in 1632, and the Online Etymology Dictionary has "living" in the sense of "action, process, or method of gaining one's livelihood" going back to 1400.
But I still think there might be a case made for a connection to makhn a lebn. Take a look at the Google Ngram Viewer for the phrases "make a living" and "making a living" from 1700 to 2000:
While there certainly are examples of early use, the phrases shoot up in the late 1800s and in the 20th century - precisely when the Yiddish influence on English began to grow dramatically.
Coincidence? You tell me! I have to go make a living, and if there's any free time - maybe also le'asot chayim...
Hard to believe, but this is Balashon's 500th post! Since I started the site in February 2006, there have been many fluctuations in post length and depth, and the frequency of posting has also varied considerably. But my interest in the subject of etymology hasn't changed, and I'm very grateful that you have continued to read and follow me for so long. I'm also particularly appreciative to those of you who click on the Google and Amazon ads and links - that small amount of income has allowed me to reinvest in resources. Just recently with that revenue, I was able to purchase a book I was interested in for a very long time, Michael Sokoloff's A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. This book, which was published in 2002, is a fantastic resource for researching Aramaic words from the Babylonian Talmud (of which many influenced later Hebrew words) and has in-depth etymologies as well.
For today's post, I thought I'd look at the methodology of Sokoloff, as well as a number of his predecessors, and hopefully you'll get some insight into how I do the research for Balashon. The word I'm looking at is alunka אלונקה - "stretcher, litter". Looking at Talmudic dictionaries is helpful, since the word appears in the Talmud, Beitza 25b, although in a slightly different form: אלונקי alunkei.
So let's start looking in Jastrow's dictionary. This is his entry:
In the preface to his dictionary, Jastrow explains his motivation in his etymologies - to regain words "from foreign origin for Semitic citizenship" and "unless conditions of importation are apparent, the presumption should be in favor of the home market." If possible, he will always prefer a Semitic origin to Talmudic words. He accused Krauss of "proclivity to find Latin and Greek in words indisputably Semitic" and said that "led the author into a labyrinth of fatal errors." However, in many cases, by sticking with his approach, Jastrow seems lost in a parallel labyrinth.
He makes two claims in this entry which support this approach. First of all, he states that the word alunkei is of Hebrew or Aramaic origin, coming from a compound of על-ענקא, al-anka, on the neck. We've previously looked at anak, and while it did originally mean neck, and led to other words, Jastrow uses anak very frequently, in etymologies which are rather far fetched (I didn't even quote his etymology for my entry on arnak, which he said originally meant "merchant's bag suspended from the neck".)
His second claim regards the word phalange. According to "Sm. Ant" - the book A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (William Smith) - it has a similar meaning in Greek to alunkei - "poles used to carry burdens". Jastrow adds that is "of Semitic origin", presumably from alunkei. I haven't found anyone else who makes that claim, and I can't think of another example where an aleph in Hebrew became a "ph" in Greek. More likely is the explanation in the Online Etymology Dictionary, in the entry for phalanx:
1550s, "line of battle in close ranks," from Latin phalanx "compact body of heavily armed men in battle array," or directly from Greek phalanx (genitive phalangos) "line of battle, battle array," also "finger or toe bone," originally "round piece of wood, trunk, log," of unknown origin. Perhaps from PIE root *bhelg- "plank, beam" (source of Old English balca "balk;" see balk (n.)). The Macedonian phalanx consisted of 50 close files of 16 men each. In anatomy, originally the whole row of finger joints, which fit together like infantry in close order. Figurative sense of "number of persons banded together in a common cause" is attested from 1600 (compare Spanish Falangist, member of a fascist organization founded in 1933).
A source with a bias to a different language is the Aruch Hashalem by Jastrow's contemporary, Alexander Kohut. Kohut has a preference for Persian origins to Talmudic words, and in his entry for alunkei, we find it as well:
The abbreviation ל"פ means לשון פרסית - "Persian Language". (I can't read the non-Hebrew script following that - if any readers can, please let me know). Many of Kohut's Persian etymologies are rejected by modern scholars. However, in this case, Persian is the generally accepted theory.
Steinsaltz on Beitza 25b has the following note:
He writes that some claim that the word derives from the Persian aurang, meaning "throne", and that word has entered Arabic as well. Aurang, or an alternate aurand, can additionally mean "glory" or "beauty" (not clear to me which meaning is earlier).
Klein has a different Persian etymology:
While he doesn't point it out here, this entry bears a great similarity to his entry for "palanquin" (also meaning "litter") in his CEDEL:
The "Old I" in the first entry, and the OI in the second, refers to "Old Indian" (Sanskrit), and so both the Hebrew/Aramaic and Portugese/Javanese words derive from palyankah / paryankah. (See this Balashon entry for more on the root of "peri-" and this one for more on the root of "angle"). The Online Etymology entry has a similar entry for palanquin (he frequently relies on Klein's CEDEL), but with an interesting twist at the end:
"a covered litter," 1580s, from Portuguese palanquim (early 16c.), from Malay and Javanese palangki "litter, sedan," ultimately from Sanskrit palyanka-s "couch, bed, litter," from pari "around" + ancati "it bends, curves," related to anka-s
"a bend, hook, angle," and meaning, perhaps, "that which bends around
the body." Some have noted the "curious coincidence" of Spanish palanca, from Latin phalanga "pole to carry a burden."
If you recall, we saw mention of phalanga in Jastrow's entry. I think a possible source of the noting of the "curious coincidence" is the 19th century Hobson-Jobson dictionary of Indian terms. Here is the relevant section for the entry on palanquin:
The two words - palanca (phalanga) and palanquin are certainly similar in both meaning and sound. Perhaps the Portuguese form was influenced by both the Asian and the European roots during their time in India, or maybe there was even earlier contact between the languages. No one seems to be sure, and doubt is not a bad thing in etymology - I certainly prefer it over unjustified confidence.
In the Hobson-Jobson entry, I happened to notice footnote #1, and I'm glad I did. The author notices:
This is referring to the word אפריון apiryon in Shir HaShirim - which I wrote about back in 2007 and had forgotten to look up now! Apiryon also means palanquin or litter, and I discussed a number of different etymologies, including one from the BDB, which says that apiryon might actually derive from this same root we've seen before:
So if this is true - then while alunka might not have a Semitic grandfather, it could very possibly have a Hebrew cousin - apiryon! As I once wrote, the real search for roots - in genealogy or
etymology - can often be more rewarding and fascinating than playing a
linguistic version of "Separated at Birth".
But as I wrote in the beginning of this post, I'm most excited about my new Sokoloff dictionary - and not for the reason you might think. Let's look at his entry:
The first suggestion he mentions, abrang, seems to be related to Steinsaltz's suggestion of aurang (see here). I can't find any cognates regarding the second suggestion. So why is this entry so exciting? It's less interesting than Klein's proposal, and what I discovered based on it. But what Sokoloff provides, which none of the books I've quoted until now did - is the sources for the etymologies! That's so important, and yet until I acquired his book, I had no idea how much it was missing. I'm sure Klein, Steinsaltz and the others did research and had reasons for their theories. But without documentation, it all just seems like speculation. So I'm hoping that I will benefit from my future research with this new book, and I hope you will as well.
You might be asking one last question. Why didn't I quote Ben Yehuda? It turns out - there's no entry for alunka in his dictionary. He began work on it in 1908 and continued until his death in 1922 (the final editing continued after he died). I found use of the word alunka in newspaper articles beginning in 1915, and books from the 1920s. These were without explanation, so it's likely the word was used in speech for a while previous to its appearance in print (it's unclear to me who started using the Hebrew alunka instead of the Aramaic alunkei). Why did Ben Yehuda leave it out? Probably because he believed it was of foreign origin, and he generally avoided including words of that nature. And while Jastrow might have disagreed - it seems that Ben Yehuda was right!
A friend recently asked me why Hebrew used the same word - tik תיק - for both "bag, satchel" and "file, dossier, portfolio". This is one of those cases where knowing the etymology helps.
The word tik has been around in Hebrew for a long time, going back to the mishna (Shabbat 16:1 mentions a tik for a torah scrolll and tefillin, meaning a case or box). However, the Hebrew word was borrowed from the Greek theke, meaning "receptacle, that which is placed". So a tik is something you place things in - which applies to both files and bags. We find almost the same sound and meaning in the English word ticking, for which the Online Etymology Dictionary has the following entry:
"cloth covering (usually of strong cotton or linen) for mattresses or pillows," 1640s, from tyke (modern tick) with the same meaning (mid-14c.), probably from Middle Dutch tike, from a West Germanic borrowing of Latin theca "case," from Greek theke "a case, box, cover, sheath"
Another related word is bibliothek, deriving from the Latin word for library:
Old English biblioðece "the Scriptures," from Latin bibliotheka "library, room for books; collection of books," from Greek bibliotheke, literally "book-repository" (from biblion, see Bible, + theke "case, chest, sheath," from root of tithenai "to put, place"
From tik, we also get the verb תיק, meaning "to file", and the related word tikiya תיקיה. While sometimes the suffix -ya is a diminutive (as in the word lachmaniya לחמניה, a roll, is a diminutive of lechem לחם, bread), in this case the suffix either means a place to put things, or a collection of, like sifriya ספריה - "library", is a place to put a book - sefer ספר. So a tikiya is a filing cabinet. But in today's computerized world, we're less likely to use the word for an actual cabinet, but a place to put our computer files, i.e. a folder.
And if we've already mentioned the word library twice, I'll go for the hat-trick. In Hebrew the word sifriya can mean, in addition to "library", also a computer directory. In both English and Hebrew the question arises as to which is the proper term for the collection of files: directory/sifriya or folder/tikiya. According to this site, both are acceptable, but directory is more appropriate for command line interfaces (like MS-DOS or Linux), and folder is better for graphical interfaces like Windows.
During the Pesach vacation, we visited the Biblical Museum of Natural History in Bet Shemesh. It's a really interesting museum, with live animals, and a guided tour that exhibits animals from the time of the Tanach, and explains both their religious and scientific background. I found particularly fascinating the cases where the the biblical word for an animal now refers to something else.
One of the surprises for me was the tzav צב. In Modern Hebrew, that word unquestionably refers to the turtle. But in the museum, we instead found a large lizard. How did this happen?
First of all, let's see why it originally meant a kind of lizard. This is relatively easy to determine, as we have the Arabic cognate dabb, meaning lizard. Kaddari says it refers to a large lizard from the Agamidae family, and the Daat Mikra on Vayikra 11:29 (the only mention of the tzav in the Tanach), more specifically identifies it with the Egyptian dabb lizard (also known as the Egyptian Mastigure), Uromastyx aegyptia, known in Arabic as dhab. It is found in the desert areas of this region, and is eaten by Bedouins (although this is prohibited to Jews in that verse in Vayikra).
In Hebrew, this family of lizards is the chardon חרדון family, and this is how Targum Yonatan translates the word. Rav Saadia Gaon explicitly identifies the tzav with the dabb lizard.
So why today does tzav mean turtle?
The Encyclopedia Mikrait says that this may be due to confusion with the only other appearance of the word tzav in the Torah in Bamidbar 7:3. That verse is describing the offerings the princes gave at the dedication of the Tabernacle, and mentions that their offerings consisted of שֵׁשׁ-עֶגְלֹת צָב - six eglot (wagons) tzav. The meaning of tzav here is very unclear. The midrashim in Sifrei on the verse and Bamidbar Rabba 12:17 mention various opinions amongst the rabbis, including "fully equipped", "beautifully decorated", or "the color of the sky". Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi says that it meant קמירות kamirot - "vaulted, covered" (deriving from the Greek kamara - "vault, arched roof", and ultimately the source of the English word camera.) Onkelos also says that tzav here means "covered",
Rashi writes that the "only" meaning of tzav is covered, and his decisiveness here may have caused later writers to view the turtle as the likely "covered" reptile. (In most editions of Rashi, he actually identifies the tzav in Vayikra as froit, Old French for frog or toad. However, Moshe Katan in his explanations of the foreign words in Rashi, printed in the introduction to the Daat Mikra, writes that some manuscripts of Rashi have the word tartuge, meaning "turtle".)
Over the years there have been some attempts to use the word shalchufa שלחופה for tortoise (based on the Arabic), but it has never caught on.
So now when you read Parashat Shemini, where it mentions the tzav, you'll have a better idea of what is referring to. But don't worry if you didn't pay attention last week, during Parashat Tzav - that's a different spelling (צו) entirely...
