On Purim we are obligated to give matanot l'evyonim מתנות לאביונים - "gifts to the poor". The more common word for a poor per...

When my bilingual six year old is offered a drink at kiddush, she would like to know if it is grape juice or "wayin". She obviousl...

(I did a number of Purim related words last year - you can see them in the category " Purim ". If you can think of any others to d...

What does the word timyon טמיון as in the phrase yarad l'timyon ירד לטמיון mean? The phrase means "down the drain, lost forever...

When we discussed the terms for lawyers and advocates - praklit , sanegor , kategor - we saw that all of them derived from Greek. This is n...

In this week's parasha (Mishpatim) we find a verse (Shmot 23:2) with a familiar phrase: לֹא-תִהְיֶה אַחֲרֵי-רַבִּים, לְרָעֹת; וְלֹא-תַ...

As we mentioned earlier, kategor קטגור is a Talmudic term for "accuser, prosecutor". It appears as the opposite of praklit in Av...

In the comments to yesterday's post , JFT asked: So according to this Mishnah what is the difference between a praklit & a 'san...

In Modern Hebrew, a praklit פרקליט is an attorney - and the State Attorney's office is known as פרקליטות המדינה - Praklitut HaMedina . ...

Marzipan is a candy made of ground almonds, and the name of a famous bakery in Jerusalem. Is the name of Semitic origin? Mike Gerver thinks...

Is the word "genie" somehow related to Hebrew? Not exactly. The word "genie" comes from the Latin genius , which in Roma...

The 22nd and last letter of the Hebrew alphabet is tav (or taw ). The Hebrew word tav תו means "mark, sign" and this was the ear...

The word arsenal derives from Arabic. From the Online Etymology Dictionary : 1506, "dockyard," from It. arzenale , from Ar. dar a...

With Tu B'Shvat coming up, lets look at two Hebrew words for tree: etz עץ and ilan אילן. I actually discussed the etymology of etz ...

Well, we're almost done with the alphabet. Today we'll deal with the second-to-last of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet - shin ...

Is there any connection between gezer גזר - "carrot" and the root גזר - "to cut"? I was surprised to find out there is...

Sometimes when I want to write about a word, I'm surprised that so little has been written about it. This is not one of those times. W...

The original meaning of mezuzah מזוזה (as in our parasha, Shmot 12:7) was "doorpost". In Talmudic Hebrew the meaning of mezuza wa...

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

In this weeks parasha, in the plague of boils ( sh'chin שחין) we come across a familiar word: אֲבַעְבֻּעֹת avabuot . This word only a...