krach

We are approaching the holiday of Purim, where the megillah is read in most cities on the 14th of Adar, but in walled cities it is read on the 15th. One of the terms for a walled city is krach כרך.

Until very recently, I would have told you that the origin of that word was fairly obvious. The root כרך means  to "bind, wrap, surround." The binding of a book is kricha כריכה, and so an individual volume in a series of books is kerech כרך. In the Pesach seder we read about how Hillel would wrap his matza (clearly not the hard matza eaten by most Ashkenazi Jews today), maror and the sacrificial meat. That wrapping - which today we duplicate by eating matza and maror together - is called korech כורך. From here we get the official word for sandwich in modern Hebrew - karich כריך.

So I assumed (as Klein writes) that a krach is so called because the walls surround it. However, I recently started studying the Talmudic tractate Megilah, and on the first page, Steinsaltz notes that a krakh is a large, generally walled city. He mentions the theory that it derives from the root כרך as we mentioned before, but only as the second possibility. The first possibility I had never heard before.

This theory (also brought first by Even Shoshan) says that krach derives from the Greek charax, meaning a fortification - a location defended by reinforcing walls. There were many places known as Charax in the Greek world, some of which can be found here. The word charax originally meant the pointed stake used to make the walls, and later came to mean the fortification itself. In this way it is very similar to the word palisade, which means a "a fence of wooden stakes forming an enclosure" but originally meant the stake itself. In fact, many translate charax, and even krach, as palisade. (A synonym of palisade is rampart, and after looking that up I now know what that line meant in the Star Spangled Banner.)

A couple of familiar English words are cognate with charax. One that sounds similar, but with an unusual etymology is "character":

mid-14c., carecter, "symbol marked or branded on the body;" mid-15c., "symbol or drawing used in sorcery," from Old French caratere "feature, character" (13c., Modern French caractère), from Latin character, from Greek kharakter "engraved mark," also "symbol or imprint on the soul," also "instrument for marking," from kharassein "to engrave," from kharax "pointed stake," from PIE root *gher- (4) "to scrape, scratch." Meaning extended in ancient times by metaphor to "a defining quality."

A less obvious cognate is "gash":

1540s, alteration of Middle English garce "a gash, cut, wound, incision" (early 13c.), from Old North French garser "to scarify, cut, slash" (Old French *garse), apparently from Vulgar Latin *charassare, from Greek kharassein "engrave, sharpen, carve, cut," from PIE *gher- (4) "to scrape, scratch"

In this case, the foreign etymology of krach seems more convincing to me, although I'm sure most Hebrew speakers would find it difficult to believe. Perhaps to educate them, we can start calling the stake-like toothpick or skewer (used to hold a karich together) a karach?

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chofesh and chovesh

A while back we talked about herut חרות - "freedom". But what about the similar word chofshi חפשי - "free" and the related chofesh חופש and chufsha חופשה - which originally meant "freedom" and today have the sense of "vacation, holiday" (the former being more general, and the latter referring to a specific break from school or work)?

The etymology of the root חפש is not clear. Klein mentions an Ugaritic cognate hps - "freeman, soldier", and Kaddari brings the Akkadian hupsu. However, one of the more interesting theories connects it to the root חבש, meaning "to bind" (or in more particular usages - to saddle an animal, to dress a wound or to imprison someone.) From this root we get the word chovesh חובש - "medic" (one who bandages wounds) and machbosh מחבוש - "(military) incarceration." Klein says that perhaps even the Hebrew word for quince, chabush חבוש, has the same origin, due to its "constipating effect."
 

I found the connection between חפש and חבש first mentioned in the writings of the 19th century writer Isaac Baer Levinsohn, who here suggests that the two related roots are an example of a "contronym" - one common root developing opposite meanings. (We've seen examples of such contronyms in Hebrew before.) While certainly most uses of chofesh and chofshi in Biblical Hebrew refer to freedom, there are a couple of examples that Levinsohn brings which would seem to point to the opposite connotation. 

 

He quotes Tehilim 88:6 -  בַּמֵּתִים חָפְשִׁי כְּמוֹ חֲלָלִים שֹׁכְבֵי קֶבֶר, which the JPS translates as "abandoned [chofshi] among the dead, like bodies lying in the grave". This translation uses "abandoned" which is a sense of "free" - free of all obligations or connections in this world. However, Levinsohn says chofshi here is like chavush - "imprisoned."

 

Another example is from Melachim II 15:5, where it describes how the king was plagued with leprosy and lived בְּבֵית הַחָפְשִׁית - b'veit hachofshit.  The JPS translates this as "isolated quarters", similar to the translation "abandoned" above. However, the context here is discussing some type of imprisonment, and this is how Levinsohn, and later the Daat Mikra explain the verse - as if it was בית החבשית beit hachavshit - "prison".

He says both senses can be understood via "the idlers who are free [from work, society] but are sealed in their homes."
 

In light of this, Aveneri (Yad Halashon, pp 197-198) says that overall, chofesh and chofshi have a somewhat negative connotation. It describes a slave being released, but not a state of true freedom. And as we've seen it can describe a leper being sent away or the state of the dead in the grave (whether or not we accept the connection between chofesh and chovesh). This caused some critics to oppose the phrase עם חופשי am chofshi in Israel's anthem, Hatikva, since chofshi here seems to only freedom from obligations, not a particular mission. Judaism generally focuses on commandments and obligations, so they preferred an adjective like kadosh קדוש - "holy" - which implies a higher level of obligation.

I don't think that the negative connotation of chofesh remains in Hebrew today. However, the tension between "freedom from" and "freedom to" certainly exists, as any parent can tell you during the חופש הגדול chofesh hagadol - "summer vacation"...

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chelek and chaklaut

A friend recently asked me a question about metathesis - the rearranging of letters in a word. Let's take a quick look at an example in Hebrew.

The word helek חלק - "part, portion" derives from the verb חלק - "to divide, share" (according to Klein). He does not connect this root to chalak חלק - "smooth", which he says is related to the Arabic halaqa "he made smooth" which is related to halaqa meaning "he created." Klein also mentions halaqa - "he measured, measured off" as a cognate of חלק meaning "to divide", but again, he doesn't connect the roots. Stahl, however, does connect them, saying that "he created" and "he measured" are related. And if I understand the footnote in Ben Yehuda correctly, he says that the meaning "smooth" could have evolved from a sense "to shave", which would have originally been "to cut, to divide." This sense - of shaving, making smooth - is the source of the halaka חלאקה - the Mizrahi version of the Ashkenazi upsherin,  the ceremony of the first haircut for three year old boys.

Chaklaut חקלאות - "agriculture" and chaklai חקלאי - "agricultural"/ "farmer" are modern Hebrew words coined by David Yellin, formed from the Aramaic words chakal חקל and chakla חקלא, both meaning "field." This Aramaic word is a metathesis of chelek - literally "a portion of land." We find chelek being used for a field in many places, such as Bereshit 33:19 - חלקת השדה chelkat hasadeh - "a portion of the field".

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hasta and ad

Arnold Schwarzenegger has been in the news recently, so I thought I'd take a look at the first word of his catchphrase, "Hasta la vista, baby". While hasta la vista is used to mean "see you later", the literal meaning in Spanish is "Until the (next) sighting." The word hasta, "until", has its origins in Arabic, coming from the Arabic word ḥattá (or hata) - also meaning "until."

I looked around for a Hebrew cognate to hatta, and if I understand these (1, 2, 3) books correctly, there is an unsurprising one - ad עד - "until" in Hebrew.

Klein says that ad, and its older form adei עדי, come from the root עדה, meaning "to pass by" (found in Iyov 28:8 and Mishlei 25:20). This is also the root of ad meaning "eternity", which Klein says literally means "progress in time".

Ad as "until" is found in a few other words:

• Biladei בלעדי - "without, apart from". Klein says it is compounded of bal בל (=not) and adei עדי (= as far as, up to). That preposition is the source of the adjective biladi בלעדי - "exclusive"
• Achshav עכשיו - "now". Klein says it is probably a contraction of "ad kshe'hu" עד כשהוא - literally, "until as it is".
• Idkun עדכון - "update". This is from the root עדכן, which is a contraction of ad kan עד כאן - "until here, so far."

And lastly we have the word for a Purim carnival, עדלידע (or עדלאידע) adloyada. This is a contraction of the Aramaic phrase found in Megila 7b עד דלא ידע - "until he could not discern (between cursed Haman and blessed Mordechai)." This article describing the word's history says it may have been influenced by the Greek Olympiada - their word for the Olympic games, another kind of celebration.

Now to finish, Arnold has been in the news for contrasting himself to a leader who has been widely criticized. However, since this blog is not political, any parallels to the Purim story are entirely coincidental...

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kerach and kereach

It was frosty here this weekend, so I got to thinking - is there any connection between the homographs קרח kerach - "ice" and kereach - "bald"?

Even Shoshan discusses the verb root קרח (as found in Vayikra 21:5), and says that the meaning is "to pull out hair", and notes that in Arabic the cognate is qara'a - or קרע in Hebrew. In Hebrew this root means "to tear, rend." (Meshullam Klarberg writes here that only in modern Hebrew does kore'a mean to tear by hand, while in Biblical and Talmudic Hebrew it could also mean cutting with an implement.)

As far as kerach ("ice"), a footnote in the Ben Yehuda dictionary points out that the Syriac cognate primarily means "storm", and speculates that this might be a connection between the two meanings: a storm can tear the leaves off of trees (making them bald), and a storm can bring with it cold and snow.

Another theory is proposed by Gesenius, that the common root means "to make smooth", which applies both to ice and to a bald head. That might be a simpler suggestion, but his book was written in 1836, with far less exposure to research into related Semitic languages. So perhaps the evidence here leads to a more complicated conclusion.

What about the name Korach קורח, found first among the sons and leaders of Esav (Bereshit 36:5, 36:16) and most famously the Levite who led the rebellion against Moshe. Daat Mikra (Bereshit 36:5) says that it probably means a bald man (which stands in contrast to the "hairy" name of Seir - also found in Esav's family).

This made me think: while certainly a bald man might get a nickname referring to his baldness, why would anyone name a baby that? Then of course, I remembered that my kids all entered life rather bald...

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ketoret and nectar

The biblical word ketoret קטרת means "smoke, odor of sacrifice, incense." According to Klein, all of the forms of the verb קטר (meaning "to smoke, burn incense, etc.) derive from that noun, and literally mean "to produce ketoret." Most of the words with that root are directly connected to that meaning, such as mikteret מקטרת - "pipe", but other's aren't so clear. Let's take a look.

The only Biblical Hebrew word that may have a different meaning is keturot קטרות, found in Yechezkel 46:22. This word is an adjective describing courtyards. The Mishna (Midot 2:5) says it means "unroofed", and are connected to our root because without a roof, the smoke could escape. However, Radak and others say it means "connected", and this is based on the Aramaic meaning of קטר - "to bind". This meaning is found a few times in the Aramaic section of the Book of Daniel, and is cognate with the Hebrew  קשר - "to bind", as found in the word kesher - "connection".

A word related to ketoret, kitor קיטור - originally meant "thick smoke, vapor", and in modern Hebrew was adopted for the word "steam." The Hebrew word for locomotive, katar קטר, is connected to the idea of a steam engine, but actually has a more interesting story. Stahl, in his Arabic dictionary, describes how the founders of modern Hebrew were trying to come up with a word for "train." Ben Yehuda suggested kitor, and David Yellin offered katar. Katar had the advantage of both hinting to the steam of kitor, but more significantly was parallel to the Arabic word for train - qitar. This Arabic word originally meant a caravan of camels, and is related to the Aramaic sense of קטר we saw earlier - "to bind." In the end, however, the suggestion of Yechiel Michel Pines was accepted - rakevet רכבת, and katar came to mean just locomotive (not the entire train).

Another word that is possibly related to the sense of "bound" is koter קוטר - "diameter". Koter entered Hebrew in the Middle Ages and was borrowed from the Arabic qutr of the same meaning. The Arabic Etymology Dictionary has the following entry:

quttr : area; diameter [Sem q-tt-r (tie), Heb qotter, Syr qttar (fasten, tie), JNA qttr]

The Arabic qattara - "drip" is apparently related to the meaning of "smoke, incense"  (perhaps in the way the incense was prepared), and in light of this, the scholar Lothar Kopf (as quoted in Stahl) connects the two meanings "incense" and "to bind" as deriving from a common meaning "things that follow one another."

One theory says that the name of the country Qatar is also related:

The name "Qatar" may derive from the same Arabic root as qatura, which means "to exude." The word Qatura traces to the Arabic qatran meaning "tar" or "resin", which relates to the country's rich resources in petroleum and natural gas.

Lastly, and most surprising to me, is the English word "nectar". The Online Etymology Dictionary provides an unrelated etymology:

from Latin nectar, from Greek nektar, name of the drink of the gods, which is said to be a compound of nek- "death" (see necro-) + -tar "overcoming"

However, Klein thinks that the word ultimately has a Semitic origin:

nectar, n., the drink of the gods (Greek mythol.) -- L., fr. Gk. nektar, 'drink of the gods', esp. 'wine', which prob. derives fr. Heb. (yayin) niqtar, 'smoked (wine), perfumed (wine)', Niph'al ( = passive form) of the Sem. base q-t-r, 'to make sacrifices, smoke'; qitter and hiqtir, 'he made sacrifices, smoked', are Pi'el ( = intensive form), resp. Hiph'il ( = causative form) of the same base, whence also qetoreth, 'sweet smoke of sacrifice, incense', Talmudic and Targumic Aram. qitra, '(thick) smoke', Ethiop. qetare, 'incense'. From q-t-r, a collateral form of this base, derive Aram. qatara, 'it exhaled odor', (said esp. of roast meat), 'it smoked' (said of fire), qatar, 'vapor, smoke, aroma', Akkad. qutru, 'smoke', qutrinnu, 'incense offering'

We've seen the concept of perfumed and spiced wine before, when we discussed why ancient wine was always mixed with water. While nectar has a much more mild meaning today - "a sugary fluid secreted by plants" - for the Greeks it might have been much more powerful!

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seret and sirton

In Hebrew, the word seret סרט means "ribbon". Let's take a look at the history of the word, and some possible relatives.

As Elon Gilad writes here, the word first appears in the Mishna and meant "strip (of fabric)". In 1892, Ben Yehuda revived seret to mean "ribbon", and in the 1920s, it came to mean "film" and "movie", due to the ribbon-like appearance of the film strip. Klein says that sirton סרטון actually means "film strip", but today sirton is used for a short film, particularly a video clip (like the ones shared on social media).

Gilad says that seret may "derive from the Greek word sirtis, which means “bolt” (as in locking the door)." This is similar to the suggestion in Ben Yehuda's dictionary that it derives from the Greek syrtēs, meaning "rope", however the dictionary ultimately rejects this idea as unlikely.

Klein does not give an etymology for seret (other than saying that it is cognate with the Arabic sharit). However, he does tell us that there is another similar looking Hebrew word that derives from the Greek syrtis: sirton שרטון (this time with the letter sin, not samech). Here is his entry for this sirton:

Post-Biblical Hebrew - "sandbank". [Borrowed from Greek sytris (=quicksand), from syrein (=to trail, drag, sweep away), which is related to sairein (=to sweep, clean)]

Note that both "bolt" and "rope" are things that are pulled or dragged.

In modern Hebrew you'll often hear the expression "ala al sirton" עלה על שרטון -  meaning metaphorically "to get stuck, run aground", like a boat on a sandbank. (Interesting that the Greek word referred to something you could get stuck in by sinking, whereas the Hebrew was the opposite - you got stuck higher up than you wanted to be.)

Syrtis today refers to two sandy gulfs in North Africa, called so either due to sandbanks or quicksand. Klein, in his CEDEL, writes that the English word "swerve" is cognate (both originating from the same Indo-European root, *swerbh), also having a similar sense to "trail, drag, sweep away."

However, there are other theories regarding the origin of seret. Stahl connects it to the root סרט, or in the Biblical form שרט, both meaning "scratch, scrape." The Arabic cognate also means "to tear", or "to rend one's garments in mourning." He writes that the Arabs would tear leaves and fibers from palm and other trees to make ropes and strips - and this is the origin of the word seret.

From this root we get the verb שרטט, "draw, rule, mark lines, sketch" and sirtut שרטוט is "drafting". Another related word is sartan סרטן. It originally meant crab (a scratching animal), which in the zodiac is the sign "Cancer", and as in English later came to mean the disease cancer as well. The connection between the crab and the disease isn't clear - perhaps the hard tumor is similar to a crab shell, or maybe the enlarged veins of a cancerous tumor resembled the legs of a crab.

To go back to our original word, in modern Hebrew slang, seret means an exceptional experience, often a negative one. Eizeh seret איזה סרט - "I can't believe what just happened to me." On the other hand, mehaseratim מהסרטים ("out of the movies") indicates something unusually excellent. I hope this post falls into the later category...

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partzuf and frum

There is a connection between the Hebrew word for face - פרצוף partzuf and the Yiddish word frum, meaning "religiously observant, pious." Let's take a look.

Partzuf is a Talmudic word borrowed from the Greek prosopon, meaning either "face" or a mask that covers the face (in Greek it eventually came to mean "person" as well). Hebrew already had the biblical word for face, panim פנים, and so partzuf went through a number of transformations. In Talmudic literature the two words were more or less synonymous, but later in Hebrew it began to take on a negative one. (Panim can be used for the face of any physical object, whereas partzuf is only for a human face). So today partzuf generally has less a positive connotation, and so you might tell a child not to make a face - לעשות פרצופים le'asot partzufim or partzuf atzuv פרצוף עצוב - "sad face".

In any case today the sense of "face" is almost always  associated with some description, and as such has also come to mean "characterization, personification", and through a process called metonymy, where an attribute is substituted for the thing meant, we have in Israeli slang the use of partzuf without any description to refer to an ugly or negative person. Eizeh partzuf איזה פרצוף - "what a (bad/ugly) guy!"

The etymology of prosopon goes back further than Greek. Klein writes that it literally means "that which is toward the eyes", from pros (= toward, to, against) and ops (=eye, face). Pros is related to the prefix pro, also meaning "before, in front of, sooner," and is the root of dozens of English words. One of them is "from", which originally meant "a preposition denoting departure or movement away in time or space" and also the word "frame":

Old English framian "to profit, be helpful, avail, benefit," from fram (adj., adv.) "active, vigorous, bold," originally "going forward," from fram (prep.) "forward; from". Influenced by related Old English fremman "help forward, promote; do, perform, make, accomplish," and Old Norse fremja "to further, execute." Compare German frommen "avail, profit, benefit, be of use."

Sense focused in Middle English from "make ready" (mid-13c.) to "prepare timber for building" (late 14c.). Meaning "compose, devise" is first attested 1540s.

The German cognate mentioned in that entry, frommen, has a related word in German - fromm, meaning "pious, devout" (via the senses of "good, righteous".) And from here we get the Yiddish word "frum".

Quite a journey, no? Things aren't always what they seem - a partzuf might be a face, or it might be a mask, and don't get me started on knowing whether or not someone is actually frum...

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achsania

I found an old note of mine that said I should write about the word achsania - the Hebrew word for "hostel." Since the note was written in English, I initially assumed that the word was spelt with a chet, and was therefore cognate with the word machsan מחסן - "storeroom", and I could see a connection regarding storing things or people.

But when I started looking in my dictionaries, I discovered that the word is actually spelled with a khaf - אכסניה (or אכסניא). Klein writes that the word originally meant "hospitality", then "lodging", and derives from the Greek xenia, meaning hospitality. Xenia is related to xenos, "stranger, guest", and is the root of the English word "xenophobia", meaning "fear of strangers." Both come from the root xeno-, "strange, foreign", and ultimately may be cognate with the Latin word meaning guest - hostis. If this is the case, it would lead to a connection between achsania and usphizin אושפיזין, as we discussed here.

Achsania earlier had the sense of "inn", which is generally more rural than an urban hotel. Today the word for inn is pundak פונדק, although tzimmer צימר is used for specifically rural guest houses. Hotel is malon מלון, and therefore the less expensive option, hostel in English, found its place in achsania. As far as I know, there's no specific Hebrew word for "motel"...

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date and dekel

Here's a connection between two words that you might not have known. I don't have too much to add, but I found it really interesting.

Klein has the following entry for the word "date" (fruit of the palm tree):

Old French date (French datte), from Old Provençal datil (or from Italian dattero), from Latin dactylus, from Greek dactylos, 'date', which is of Semitic origin. Compare Hebrew deqel, Aramaic diqla, Syriac deqla, Arabic daqal, 'date palm', and Hebrew Diqlah, name of a region in Arabia, rich in date palms (see Genesis 10:27 and I Chronicles 1:21). The form of Greek daktylos, 'date', was influenced by a folk-etymological association with daktylos, 'finger', suggested by the fingerlike shape of the date.

In Biblical Hebrew we don't have dekel דקל for date, but rather tamar תמר. And in Talmudic Hebrew, when dekel was introduced (likely via Aramaic), it was used to refer to the date palm, not the date fruit (as in other Semitic languages). Tamar continued to refer to both the tree and the fruit.

Regarding the Dikla דלקה of Bereshit 10:27, the Daat Mikra writes that Arabic geographers mention a place called Dikla in Yemen.

Regarding the root dkl - Klein in his Hebrew dictionary, following Ben Yehuda, says that the ultimate etymology is unknown.

The homonym for date - "time" is not related at all, but as we saw here, might have a connection to the word in Hebrew for religion - dat דת.

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geves and gypsum

The Hebrew word geves גבס and the English word gypsum are closely related. Let's see how.

In Hebrew today, you'll most likely hear geves used to describe a type of construction - drywall, used to form the interior walls of buildings, and for orthopedic casts of plaster. But both of those uses were adopted because of the mineral primarily used to make them - gypsum.

During Talmudic times there were a number of longer words for gypsum including gipsis גפסיס (Para 5:9, Pesachim 75a), gipsos גיפסוס (Yerushalmi Shabbat 5:1) and gipsim גפסים (some versions of Kelim 10:2). The Ben Yehuda dictionary reports that the current form, geves, was based on these Talmudic forms, and this was the word used by people in Eretz Yisrael in his time. He doesn't mention this, but I wonder if perhaps the switch from the letter "pe" to the letter "bet" was due to influence from contemporary Arabic, who often make that switch, and pronounce their word for gypsum as jabas. (It's possibly that the answer is in page 119 of this book, but unfortunately I don't have access to it and  Google Books only gives me a snippet view.)

The dictionary also points out that the Talmudic forms come from the Greek, and this is where the English word gypsum derives as well. Klein writes in his CEDEL in the entry for "gypsum":

Latin, from Greek gypsos, 'chalk', of Semitic origin. Compare Arabic jibs, Mishnaic Hebrew gebhes, gephes, 'plaster, mortar, gypsum', which probably derive from Akkadian gassu (whence also Aramaic gassa גצא, whence Arabic jass, jiss, juss, qass, qiss), 'gypsum'.

The Aramaic gatza גצא, which according to Sokoloff means "lime", is found in some Talmudic era texts (some versions of Moed Katan 10b) as a parallel to sid סיד - "whitewash".

So as often happened in that region, the word geves was originally Semitic (Akkadian), then borrowed into Greek, then borrowed back into Hebrew and Aramaic. That is how language is built - not with stone walls that never change, but with much more adaptable gypsum...

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nasi

Why is the Hebrew word for "president" נשיא nasi? I'm not entirely sure, but I'll share my ideas with you. Let's start out by looking at the history of the word.

The word appears in the bible 129 times (not including four other cases where it means "rain cloud", but that's unrelated). The Even-Shoshan concordance says it means "head of a tribe, head of a congregation, ruler, etc." One thing I noticed from looking at the concordance was that it shows up in some biblical books, but not others.

Milgrom notes this in Excursus 1, "Some Political Institutions of Early Israel", in JPS Numbers. He defines nasi as "chieftan" or "clan leader", and sometimes the leader of the entire tribe. He then writes:

The term nasi' occurs over one hundred times in the Bible in a striking distribution. It clusters in the first four books of the Torah and in Joshua and again in Ezekiel and the postexilic books. It is totally absent from Deuteronomy, Judges Samuel and all the other prophets.

He continues:

The antiquity of the term nasi' is corroborated by its occurrence only among those non-Israelite societies that are nomadic: Ishmaelites (Gen 17:20, 25:16) and Midianites (Num. 25:14)

Sarna, in his comment to Shemot 22:27 in JPS Exodus makes a similar comment:

Hebrew nasi'  is the title given to the chief of a clan or tribe in the period before the monarchy.

And in his commentary on Bereshit 34:2, Sarna notes that Hamor, is called the nasi of the land, and not a king, as the Canaanite leaders usually are, because "the ruler of Shechem has dominion over rural - that is, tribal - territory as well as the urban center ... Such a complex situation does not permit absolute power. Indeed, Hamor does not act like a king."

So from all this we see that nasi refers to a leader who is not a king, and therefore is absent from many sections of the bible that focus on the monarchy. There are some biblical synonyms for nasi, such as nasich נסיך and nagid נגיד. It might seem, due to their similar sounds that nasi and nasich  are related, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Nasich, while meaning "prince" in current Hebrew, derives from the root נסך, "to pour", and as Klein writes, originally meant "he upon whom the anointing oil was poured". Nagid  (which today is used as "governor", as in "governor of the Bank of Israel") does not share a common root with nasi, but as Klein writes, they share a similar path of development. Here is his entry for the etymology of nasi:

Derived from נשא and literally meaning 'lifted up, exalted'. For sense development, compare nagid (=leader), from נגד, 'to be high'. According to G. Hoffman, nasi literally means 'speaker', and derives from נשא in the sense 'he lifted up (his word)'; compare nagid, which may have also meant originally 'speaker, spokesman'.

Later the term nasi was adopted to mean the head of the Sanhedrin, e.g. Rabbi Yehuda Ha-Nasi. This Encyclopedia Judaica entry describes how it was used even after the end of the Talmudic period:

The title nasi persisted for many centuries and in different lands throughout the Middle Ages, sometimes as the title of a defined head of a Jewish institution, sometimes as an honorific title only, given to important personages and to sons of illustrious families.

But why president? My theory is that there had always been a clear distinction between a king - מלך melech, and nasi. This certainly doesn't mean that the word nasi ever meant a democratically elected ruler before modern times - but in earlier periods, when the role of king had very significant implications (particularly in Jewish law), there needed to be an alternate term for such a leader. And since nasi had been used throughout the generations, it was a natural choice for a translation of "president", when that term began to be used.

Of course, I wouldn't need to resort to conjecture if I could find any source mentioning the coinage of the modern use. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any such source. As I did when I researched artzot habrit, I turned to the archives of the Historical Jewish Press. The earliest mentions of nasi there meaning "president" appear in the 1860s, describing Abraham Lincoln (there's an interesting Hebrew article here about how Lincoln was covered in the European Jewish press at the time). It's unclear to me if this means that the sense was coined then, or if it had been used earlier, but no one happened to be writing about presidents before that point.

This 1858 article in Hamagid, mentions James Buchanan, but calls him the ראש ממשלה Rosh Memshala of America, a term that today means "prime minister" and sar שר, "minister":

By 1861, the newspaper Hacarmel describes Lincoln as nasi, but puts the term "president" in parentheses to help the reader:

The parentheses are gone by this 1862 article in Hacarmel, although they call him ראש נשיא - rosh nasi:

And the earliest mention I found of "president" in Hebrew was from this 1853 book discussing Napoleon III, who had the title of "prince-president".

As mentioned in this Wikepedia entry, the term "president" has a history going back quite a while before being adopted by the founders of the United States. But those usages weren't so well known, so I can see why I wouldn't be able to find any references to them in Hebrew texts. However, certainly there must have been some awareness of US presidents before Lincoln, even if the Jews were not paying so much attention to the goings on in the States at the time (and their press wasn't as fully developed).

If any of you readers know of earlier uses of nasi or other Hebrew synonyms for "president", or any other sources that discuss the coinage of the term, I'd love to hear...

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navi

The Hebrew word for "prophet" - נביא navi has a surprising number of suggested etymologies. Let's take a look at some of them.

Klein gives the following etymology for navi:

Probably derived from the base נבא (= to call, proclaim); accordingly the original meaning of navi probably was 'the man who calls or proclaims'.

He then has this entry for the root נבא:

Akkadian nabu (=to call, announce, proclaim), Arabic naba'a (= he uttered with a low voice, announced), naba' (= announcement, information), nab'ah (=a low sound).

This article by Daniel E. Fleming quotes Albright as saying that navi

is a noun from a passive form of the Semitic root nb', "to call"... The prophet is therefore "one called" by God.

In the end, he prefers this theory:

The Syrian nabu is best understood as one who invokes the gods, and the noun should be an active participle from the verb nabu, "to name." ... the Hebrew nabi is best explained by the same etymology.

The Ben Yehuda dictionary says that the Arabic verb meaning "to announce, inform," had the sense of someone walking from land to land, and perhaps this sense of walking from place to place was the original meaning, since these kinds of travelers would be the ones to inform.

The same source also suggest another theory, which connects it to a different Arabic root meaning to "wake from sleep", in which someone's heart is suddenly awake with the need to speak about something.

Returning to the Akkadian connection, the Akkadian dictionary has the following entry for nabu:

G. to name (+2 acc.) ; to invoke (a god) ; to nominate ; to decree, ordain D. to lament, wail Š. to cause to proclaim N. to be named ; to be appointed, called upon

This last sense, "to be appointed", calls to mind a suggested etymology by my friend Michael Gerver. He wrote:

Although I have not seen this suggested anywhere, it seems possible that Arabic nawaba, “represent,” “substitute,” is related to Hebrew נוב, “speak,” if the Arabic word originally meant “speak for.” Arabic nawaba is the source of Arabic na’ib, “viceroy,” whose plural nuwab is the source, via Hindi or Urdu, of English nabob

Even if nawaba doesn't mean "to speak for", it could still be connected to nabob via the Akkadian "appoint". Here is the Online Etymology Dictionary entry for nabob:

1610s, "deputy governor in Mogul Empire," Anglo-Indian, from Hindi nabab, from Arabic nuwwab, honorific plural of na'ib "viceroy, deputy," from base n-w-b "to take someone's place." Also used of Europeans who came home from India having made a fortune there, hence "very rich man" (1764).

I also have no proof of this (although as always, I welcome help from readers), but I relish the opportunity to discuss nabob (which can mean "important person" in addition to "rich man"), as it was used so masterfully by my inspiration for this blog, William Safire. When Safire was a White House speechwriter in 1970, he wrote a speech for Vice President Spiro Agnew that used the phrase "nattering nabobs of negativism." It is one of the most famous quotes associated with both Agnew and Safire.

I've always loved the phrase - but until now, had no idea that nabob could be perhaps related to navi...

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gaon

Last week we discussed how mistorin מסתורין is a Talmudic era "blend" of a Hebrew root and a Greek word. A more recent blend is the word gaon גאון. Let's take a look.

In Biblical Hebrew, gaon has a few different meanings - "glory, majesty", "pride, haughtiness" and "rising of the waters, tides." All of these meanings show a connection to the source of gaon - the root גאה, which means "to rise up, be proud", and is also the source of the word for pride - גאוה ga'ava.

The word is used in Nachum 2:3 (as well as Tehilim 47:5) in the positive sense of "pride":

כִּ֣י שָׁ֤ב ה' אֶת־גְּא֣וֹן יַעֲקֹ֔ב כִּגְא֖וֹן יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל
"For the LORD has restored the Pride of Jacob, as well as the Pride of Israel"

Gaon Yaakov - "Pride of Jacob" was adopted as the name of a post Talmudic Babylonian yeshiva, and the head of that yeshiva, whose official title was Rosh Yeshivat Gaon Yaakov, was abbreviated to "Gaon". During this period the most important rabbinical leaders were known as geonim, some of the famous including Amram Gaon and Saadia Gaon.

The period of the Geonim ended around 1000 CE, but the title of gaon was continued to be used to describe individuals who had mastered the Torah. Such usage can be found in the poetry of Ibn Ezra and others, and perhaps most famously it was used to describe the 18th century rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna - the Vilna Gaon.

The blend I mentioned above occurred later. Gaon sounds similar to the word "genius" in many foreign languages. In addition to English, we find the German and French genie, Russian гений (geniy), and Yiddish zheni. So in Modern Hebrew gaon came to refer to a genius - indicating inherent intellectual ability, and not just proficiency in the study of Torah.

Within Modern Hebrew the adjective geoni גאוני - "ingenious" developed as well. I'll leave it up to you to decide whether or not this post fits that description!

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seter and setira

The words seter סתר -"hideaway; secret" and setira  סתירה - "contradiction", seem to have the same root - סתר. However, they are not related.

The verb סתר meaning "to hide, conceal", most commonly found in the hifil form - histir הסתיר - "he hid", is found in Biblical Hebrew and has cognates in other Semitic languages such as Ugaritic, Aramaic and Arabic.

Setira, however, derives from a homographic root סתר, which originally meant "to pull down, destroy", and that sense was expanded to mean "contradict, refute." Both these uses are found in Rabbinic Hebrew, but not in Biblical Hebrew. What we do find in Biblical Hebrew, in one verse, is the form שתר (Shmuel I 5:9). where it means something like "break out, burst."

We can see from the Arabic cognates that these are two different roots - the root meaning "hide" is cognate with the Arabic satara, whereas the root meaning "tear down" has a cognate in the Arabic shatara.

While one might assume a connection between seter and the English word "mystery", the latter has an unrelated etymology:

from Anglo-French *misterie, Old French mistere "secret, mystery, hidden meaning" (Modern French mystère), from Latin mysterium "secret rite, secret worship; a secret thing," from Greek mysterion (usually in plural mysteria) "secret rite or doctrine," from mystes "one who has been initiated," from myein "to close, shut" (see mute (adj.)); perhaps referring to the lips (in secrecy) or to the eyes (only initiates were allowed to see the sacred rites).

That said, Klein does write that the Hebrew word mistorin מסתורין - "mystery", is a "blend" of מסתור mistor (a biblical word meaning "hiding place, shelter") and Greek mysterion. What's interesting about this blend is that it is found already in Rabbinic Hebrew  (where it is also spelled מסטורין, showing more Greek influence). I was more familiar with these blends in Modern Hebrew, such as עלית elit - blending the Hebrew עלי ili- "upper" and the French "elite."

So while I might have torn down any ideas you had connecting the roots, at least it is a hidden mystery no more...

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keren

A reader wrote and asked how did keren קרן come to mean both "horn, ray" and "fund"?

Both Even-Shoshan and Klein say there are two possible answers. We'll look at each, but first let's take a look at the two meanings.

The first dictionary entry for keren, is found throughout Biblical Hebrew and has a number of meanings:

• horn (as in the horn of an animal)
• a shofar (made from a horn)
• strength, power (figuratively related to the strength of the horn)
• ray, beam (a ray protrudes from its source like a horn. A misreading of the Biblical verse describing the rays radiating from Moshe caused many Christians to believe that Moshe, and in fact all Jews, had horns).
• corner, point (again, related to the idea of "protrusion")
• container (a horn was used to hold things, like oil, food, etc)

Keren meaning "fund, capital, principal" is a financial term, and is found in post-biblical Hebrew. It always has a distinct dictionary entry.

While as I said, both Klein and Even-Shoshan say that this later meaning of keren might have developed from the earlier one, neither explain how. Horowitz, however, does write (page 63):

Since keren, the horn, was used to store oil it gradually came to mean a receptacle in general, or a place where things are stored. From this usage developed the meaning "a fund".

He doesn't quote any verses, but the usage in Shmuel I 16:13 - keren  hashemen קרן השמן - "the keren of oil" (used for anointing kings) is one example of this usage. So keren went from a horn used to store oil and became a fund used to "store" money.

An alternate explanation says that the two meanings of keren have different roots. For the meaning "fund", Klein provides this etymology, unrelated to "horn":

borrowed from Akkadian qerenu (=heap, pile, stack; threshing floor), qaranu (=he heaped, piled)

This would mean that this sense of keren is cognate to the Hebrew goren גורן - "threshing floor", as both have the same Akkadian root.

Keren as horn, however, has a very ancient etymology, and many sources, such as this one, find cognates in Indo-European languages (and I briefly touched on it in this post).

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ketev and kotev

In the Bible, we find the word ketev קטב meaning "destruction, plague". It appears in this form in Devarim 32:24, Tehilim 91:6, and Yeshaya 28:2. In Hoshea 13:14 there is a different vocalization - it appears as kotev. In Talmudic Hebrew and later, ketev is also the name of a demon.

A homonym is kotev meaning "axis, pole". This usage began in the Middle Ages. For example, Ibn Tibbon uses it in his Hebrew translation of the Arabic Guide of the Perplexed by Maimonides.

Is there any connection between the two words?

Regarding ketev, Klein follows the Ben Yehuda dictionary and provides the following etymology:

Related to Aramaic קטב (=he cut), Arabic qataba (= he cut off), qutbah (=arrow).

And as is mentioned in the Ben Yehuda dictionary, a connection between arrows and ketev as destruction can be found in the chapter of Tehilim (91:5-6) where ketev is mentioned:

You need not fear the terror by night, or the arrow that flies by day, the plague that stalks in the darkness, or the scourge (ketev) that ravages at noon.

Other Hebrew roots beginning with the letters קט that mean "cut" include קטם,  קטע, קטם, קטף, as well as the related words beginning with קצ (as we discussed here).

Kotev meaning "axis, pole", derives directly from the Arabic qutb, of the same meaning. Klein does not connect qutb - "axis" and qutbah - "arrow", and Ben Yehuda's comment suggests a possible connection but does not elaborate. I could imagine that the straightness of an arrow could lead to a connection with poles or a straight line like an axis. However, I haven't found confirmation of that. Perhaps one of you readers has a source that can help?

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chupar

What is the origin of the Hebrew slang word chupar צ'ופר meaning "bonus" or "perk"? Ruvik Rosenthal in his Hebrew slang dictionary offers two suggestions.

The first is that it derives from the Spanish word chupar, meaning "to suck", either via Ladino or perhaps directly from Spanish. He suggest that if this is the case, it might be found in a phrase like "para chuparse los dedos", which is Spanish for  "finger-licking good" (and in fact was used as the slogan for KFC). Chupar, which is of imitative origin (a sucking sound), is also found in the legendary monster, the chupacabra, which literally means "goat sucker."

The other suggestion is that is the Hebrew chupar comes from an altered version of the adjective meshupar משופר - improved. This supposedly began in the Israeli army before the Six Day War, where the soldiers were served manot krav meshuparot מנות קרב משופרות - "improved battle rations", which the soldiers shortened to mechuparot מצ'ופרות, and from that adjective the noun chupar arose.

Another related slang word that came out of the Israeli army is shaptzer שפצר. This root is a combination of שפר - "to improve" and שפץ - "to repair". Together, shaptzer means to repair and improve - i.e. "to renovate."

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meltzar

The Hebrew word for waiter is meltzar  מלצר  (feminine meltzarit מלצרית). But Klein has the following definition and etymology:

guardian [Probably from Akkadian massaru (=guardian).]

The Akkadian massaru is probably cognate with the Hebrew root נצר, also meaning "to guard" (which we discussed here).

How did meltzar get from guardian to waiter?

The word only appears twice in Biblical Hebrew, both in the first chapter of the Book of Daniel. The book begins with the king of Babylon calling for some Israelites (including Daniel) for training, to eventually enter the king's service.

The king allotted daily rations to them from the king’s food and from the wine he drank. They were to be educated for three years, at the end of which they were to enter the king’s service. (verse 5)

Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the king’s food or the wine he drank, so he sought permission of the chief officer not to defile himself, and God disposed the chief officer to be kind and compassionate toward Daniel. The chief officer said to Daniel, “I fear that my lord the king, who allotted food and drink to you, will notice that you look out of sorts, unlike the other youths of your age—and you will put my life in jeopardy with the king.”    (verses 8-10)

We here (verse 11) see the first appearance of the word meltzar:

וַיֹּ֥אמֶר דָּנִיֵּ֖אל אֶל־הַמֶּלְצַ֑ר אֲשֶׁ֤ר מִנָּה֙ שַׂ֣ר הַסָּֽרִיסִ֔ים עַל־דָּנִיֵּ֣אל חֲנַנְיָ֔ה מִֽישָׁאֵ֖ל וַעֲזַרְיָֽה׃

Daniel replied to the guard [meltzar] whom the chief officer had put in charge of Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah

And then we see the word once again in verse 16:

“Please test your servants for ten days, giving us legumes to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the youths who eat of the king’s food, and do with your servants as you see fit.” He agreed to this plan of theirs, and tested them for ten days. When the ten days were over, they looked better and healthier than all the youths who were eating of the king’s food. So the guard [meltzar] kept on removing their food, and the wine they were supposed to drink, and gave them legumes. (verses 12-16)

So since this guard was occupied with bringing and removing the food from Daniel and his friends, it's easy to understand how one might assume he was a waiter, not a guard. Rashi on verse 11 says that a meltzar is someone who organizes the portions of food and the dishes. He translates with a French word of which there are various versions. The scholar Moshe Katan says that Rashi most likely wrote מיישטר"א, which would make it a form of the Old French maistre - "master". That would make it related to the term maître d', which is an abbreviation of maître d'hôtel, meaning "the head of the house."

It is difficult to say if Rashi reflected this understanding of the word, or because of his influence made that the common meaning. Ben Yehuda defines the word as "steward", a person in charge of the affairs of the house, etc. This meaning contains both concepts presented in Rashi - someone who organizes the food (think of a steward or stewardess on an airplane), as well as master of the house.

However, as Elon Gilad writes here, Ben Yehuda did not want the word meltzar used for "waiter" in Modern Hebrew. He preferred dayal דייל (feminine dayelet דיילת). He coined dayal on the basis of the Talmudic Aramaic word dayala דיילא - "attendant", which in turn derives from the Greek word for slave or servant - doulos. Doulos is also the root of the English word doula, which literally means "female slave".

However, as happened on more than one occasion, Ben Yehuda's plans did not win out, and people continued referring to waiters as meltzarim. But his word dayal was eventually redeemed - when El Al airlines was founded in 1948, they needed a specialized word for someone attending to passengers - and so a few years later, dayal became the Hebrew word for steward. Quite the journey for these words!

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nachash, nichush and nechoshet

Is there any connection between the Hebrew words nachash נחש - "snake", nichush ניחוש - "guess" and nechoshet נחושת - "copper"? They all appear to have the same root. However, it doesn't appear very likely that they are connected with each other. Let's take a closer look.

Nachash is the biblical word for snake, and Klein doesn't say much about its etymology other than that it is likely related to the Arabic word for serpent - "hanash". This is clearly an example of metathesis, but he doesn't say which form is likely the original form of the word. Horowitz, in How the Hebrew Language Grew, provides the following anecdote:

The little children were playing at the edge of the clearing in front of their house. Suddenly their mother, horror struck, saw a snake near them, with lifted head, poised to strike. She hissed out to them sharply the warning sound חש (chash) imitating the very hiss of the snake. The children heard. They understood and ran to safety.

From this warning syllable chash arose the Hebrew word for snake nachash.

It's a bit fanciful, but I think it's reasonable to claim that nachash might have onomatopoeic origins. Other words ending in -chash also relate to sounds, like lachash לחש - "whisper"and rachash רחש - "rustle".

Nichush (and the verb נחש) did not originally mean "guess". In biblical Hebrew it meant "divination" and was associated with magical practices. Only in modern Hebrew was it "secularized" to mean "guess." Klein points out that it is cognate with the Arabic nahisa and nahusa   - "was unlucky". The Arabic form entered Hebrew slang as nachs נחס - "unlucky" or "bad".

Regarding the etymology, Horowitz does connect nichush to nachash, saying that the divination was apparently done with snakes. However, Stahl, Klein and Kaddari all say that nichush is more likely related to lachash, since the diviners would whisper when reciting their incantations.  The BDB mentions a theory that nichush derives from nachash, but rejects it because Aramaic has nichush, but does not have nachash meaning snake.

Our last term is nechoshet which Klein translates as brass or copper (BDB adds bronze), and while he provides cognates in a number of other Semitic languages, he doesn't connect it to either nachash or nichush. One derivative of that word is nachush נחוש, which meant "brazen" in Biblical Hebrew, in the same way that the English word brazen derives from brass:

Old English bræsen "of brass," from bræs "brass" + -en. The figurative sense of "hardened in effrontery" is 1570s (in brazen-face), perhaps suggesting a face unable to show shame.

In modern Hebrew the word nachush does not always have the negative connotation, and instead can also mean "decisive, firm, steadfast."

If you're wondering about the phrase נחש נחושת - nachash nechoshet found in Bamidbar 21:9, referring to a "copper snake", please take a look at my post from a few years ago about ish and isha. What we have here is a play on words, a pun - not any proof of an etymological connection.

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