In honor of Shavuot, lets look at a staple dairy food: chemah (or chem'ah ) - חמאה. In Modern Hebrew this always refers to butter, but ...

While there are those who believe that perhaps the Phoenicians discovered the New World , I don't think anyone thinks they came up with ...

One of the theories as to the origin of the name of the continent Africa is from the Phoenician afar , which is identical to the Hebrew עפר...

Previously, we discussed the etymology of Europe , and how it gets its name from erev ערב - which means "to enter", based on the ...

In our discussion about erev , we discussed how one original meaning was "to enter", and the place where the sun enters in the eve...

After writing about בוקר boker , it makes sense to write about ערב erev . However, while we presented a number of different derivatives of ב...

Many years ago, when I was touring Israel with a group, we were going to visit Ben Gurion's residence on Kibbutz Sde Boker . While discu...

Every now and then I'll find a word that really surprises me that it has Semitic origins. Mattress is one of them. From the Online Etymo...

The Jewish custom of saying LeChayim (or lechaim / lekhayim / lekhaim / l'chayim / l'chaim / l'khayim / l'khaim ) לחיים is ...

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

I've already mentioned here how the Phoenician colony of Carthage has a Semitic etymology: " Qart-Hadasht , related to the Hebrew ...

I love puns. They're great fun, and word play often shows a sophisticated grasp of language. The comic strip Pearls Before Swine is a ma...

It is very common around the Lag B'Omer bonfire to have a sing-along called a kumzits (also spelled kumzitz or kumsitz ). As this arti...

Lately in my area of Israel there's been a lot of complaints about traffic. In general, when I have to wait in long lines in Israel - in...

The Yiddish term for "chicken leg" or "drumstick" is pulke ( פולקע ), and it has entered Hebrew as well (פולקה). Stahl ...

The Hebrew word for ten is eser עשר (and the masculine form is asarah עשרה). Does this number derive from an earlier word? Klein follows...

The Hebrew word for nine is tesha (pronounced more like "taysha") תשע, and the masculine form is tisha תשעה (as in Tisha B'Av...

The Hebrew word for the number eight is שמונה - shmoneh . A word that might seem to have the same root is shemen שמן - "fat, oil"...

The Hebrew number for seven is שבע - sheva . A homonymic root is שבע - "to swear, to take an oath". Is there a connection between ...

The Hebrew word for six is shesh שש (masc. shisha שישה). The Hebrew and English words sound similar, and in other languages there is even ...