The Hebrew word for "spice" is tavlin תבלין, with the plural tavlinim תבלינים. This usage goes back to Talmudic times (e.g. Shab...

I was in Eilat last week, and while there I got to thinking about Yam Suf ים סוף. What's a better translation - Red Sea or Sea of Reeds...

I didn't mention it in the previous post, but pereg פרג (poppy / millet) isn't related to pargit פרגית (young chicken). Another un...

We just dealt with some words for crops of debated identity - here's another one, but with a Purim connection. Early in this site, we d...

One of my favorite topics to write about is the change of meaning in words relating to food. We've already seen that a melafefon origin...

Yesterday I was discussing the word parnasa פרנסה on the new Balashon Page on Facebook (please join!). I quoted my post on " pras and...

In the post about pashtida , we mentioned how in the Talmud, the verb טפל meant "to paste, to plaster" (dough in the example we br...

In the discussion of shibolet , we mentioned that the Radak described how the Eprhaimites pronounced the word improperly. Here's part o...

As I've mentioned before , William Safire was the first language writer I ever read, and a major inspiration for Balashon. Since his dea...

There are many theories as to the origin of the word "shlemiel" - an unlucky, clumsy person. (I'll stick with this spelling ov...

Growing up in America, one of my clearest memories from Chanukah was getting those foil wrapped chocolate coins - "gelt". Gelt me...

We previously looked at glatt , which went from describing a particular stringency regarding the lungs of cows, to describing extra kosher f...

We've just discussed mehadrin - now let's look at that other word for "super kosher": glatt . I once read an article wh...

Today the word mehadrin מהדרין is generally associated with “super” kosher food (or even bus lines …). But the word actually first appears...

Today I heard on the news a word I wasn't too familiar with: kalgas קלגס. The dictionary definition is "soldier", but the con...

Sukkot was last week, and we just put away the last part of our sukkah. So it seems like a good time to finish one last sukkot related word....

On Hoshana Rabbah there is a custom to greet people with the Aramaic expression פתקא טבא pitka tava - for which the Hebrew equivalent is פ...