The English word "ghoul" derives from Arabic. Here's the Online Etymology Dictionary entry for ghoul : 1786, goul , in the Eng...

Last week on Purim we read the book of Esther, and next week we start the month of April. It turns out that Esther and April have more in co...

Several years ago, I wrote about the root gazar גזר - "to cut". After pointing out that it's not related to gezer  גֶּזֶר - ...

Let's take a look at the Hebrew root עקר. As a verb, in the kal form it means "to uproot, extract, displace" and in the piel f...

The Hebrew word naar נער has a number of meanings - two verbs and a noun. Let's look and see if they are related. One verb means "...

In Shemot 28:15-20, there is a description of the breastplate of the high priest - the choshen mishpat . The breastplate contained 12 stones...

In 2007, we discussed the Hebrew word for "cucumber", melafefon מלפפון. In the end of the post, I quoted an article that stated: ...

One of the most common queries I receive is if two similar looking words - one in Hebrew and one in English (or some other language) are rel...

 I was surprised to learn that the English word "cherry" may have Semitic roots. The Online Etymology Dictionary has the following...

The Hebrew word for "elbow" - מרפק marpek  is not of biblical origin. It first appears in Rabbinic Hebrew, for example in Mishna S...

If you haven't noticed, my recent posts have frequently referred to Klein's Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Lan...

For the past few decades, Amazon has been one of the most recognized brand names worldwide. The founder chose the name because of the exoti...

We've previously discussed the Hebrew word שקד  shaked , meaning "almond." But what about the etymology of the word "almo...

In an earlier post, we discussed the Semitic etymologies of two towns in upstate New York: Utica and Ithaca . Both are named for cities in t...

Mitchell First is a scholar of Jewish history who, like me, has a fascination with the origin of Hebrew words and phrases. He has published...

When I was a young kid, I visited Spain. It was my first overseas trip, and I really enjoyed it. We drove all over the southern part of the ...

 A while back , I discussed Hebrew words that begin with the letters קצ. In that list I wrote: קצה - cut, from it we have קצין, captain, jud...

The last post was discussing the word dfus  דפוס - "printing," and how it derives from the Greek  typos, meaning "type."...