The phrase דֶּרֶךְ אֶרֶץ derekh eretz appears hundreds of times in rabbinic literature. Literally meaning "the way of the world," it has multiple meanings. Generally, they are divided into these three categories: accepted manners, etiquette, and customs work, occupation, livelihood a euphemism for sexual relations Shmuel Safrai in his essay The Term Derekh Ereẕ / מובנו של המונח 'דרך-ארץ' and David…
The root (or perhaps better to say roots) ענה anah is generally said to have four meanings in Hebrew. Klein identifies them as follows:: answer sing afflict occupy Let’s look at each of them and the words deriving from them. Answer This includes the senses of “answer, reply, respond”. It’s the most popular use of the verb in Hebrew today. A particular type of response is responding as a witness,…
Is there any connection between the words ra’al רַעַל - “poison, toxin” and re’ala רְעָלָה - “veil, scarf”? There are three primary theories. Let’s review them. The first suggests a connection between the root רעל and the root ערל, via a metathesis (a rearrangement of the letters). The adjective עָרֵל arel means “uncircumsized”, and this theory proposes a common sense of both roots meaning “to…
In Hebrew, the verb רחץ rachatz means “to wash” or “to bathe.” In Aramaic, it means “to trust” or “to rely.” Is there any connection between the two? Let’s start by looking at the Hebrew root. It appears frequently in Biblical Hebrew — 72 times throughout the Tanakh . When talking about physical washing, as opposed to metaphorical cleansing, it refers to washing the human body, as in bathing, or…
The word אֲגַרְטָל agartal , meaning "vase" in Modern Hebrew, doesn’t look like a native Hebrew word. But it actually has a biblical origin. It appears in only one verse, in a list of vessels taken by Nebuchadnezzar from the Temple in Jerusalem and then returned by Cyrus: וְאֵלֶּה מִסְפָּרָם אֲגַרְטְלֵי זָהָב שְׁלֹשִׁים אֲגַרְטְלֵי־כֶסֶף אָלֶף מַחֲלָפִים תִּשְׁעָה וְעֶשְׂרִים׃ "This is the…
A casbah is a citadel or a fortified quarter of an Arab city. Does it have a cognate in Hebrew? Casbah (sometimes spelled kasbah) entered English from French, which got it from North African Arabic, where kasba meant "fortress." In Hebrew today it is spelled קַסְבָּה . In Arabic, in addition to fort/citadel, kasba can also mean " reed, cane, pipe. " There are two theories as to how the two…
Today is Balashon’s 20th anniversary. I didn’t want to write a typical post about a single word or root, so I’m doing something different: an interview-style Q&A. I’ll ask myself the kinds of questions readers might be curious about - how the blog started, who it was for, what kept it going, what the numbers look like - and answer them as honestly as I can. It’s part nostalgia, part curiosity, and…
If you’ve been wondering about Balashon email updates, here’s the good news: they’re working again. I wrote up the background and why this has been complicated here: https://www.balashon.com/2025/11/email-updates.html To subscribe now, you can use the subscription box in the sidebar (it uses the same link), or subscribe directly here:…
Just a test.
For many years, I provided the ability to subscribe to Balashon posts via Google FeedBurner. That feature shut down in 2021. I've since switched a few times - including MailerLite and Mailchimp, and most recently "follow.it". All of them have now removed the option for free email subscriptions, and I have not yet found a replacement. So first of all, you should know that I am aware that there are…
It’s been a while since I’ve posted here on Balashon. But I haven’t stopped writing about Hebrew and language. For some time now, I’ve been publishing a weekly column in HaMizrachi Weekly , where I explore language issues connected to the weekly Torah reading. You can read the archives and subscribe here: 👉 HaMizrachi Weekly In addition, I’m working on a new book - more details coming soon! So…
The latest viral internet trend is creating AI-generated images in the style of Studio Ghibli. You've very likely seen them by now—or maybe even created some yourself. They look something like this: But did you know there's a connection between Ghibli and a very common Hebrew root? As noted, the images are inspired by the style of Studio Ghibli, a Japanese animation (anime) studio. The Wikipedia…
Let's look at two Hebrew words for clown - לֵיצָן leitzan and מוּקְיוֹן mukion . Leitzan is the more common of the two, so we'll start by examining it. It first appears in Rabbinic Hebrew , meaning "scorner, scoffer, mocker, jester." It is parallel to the biblical לֵץ letz , which is both a verb "to scorn, scoff" and also a substantive noun meaning "scorner, scoffer." The word letz appears in the…
A reader asked about an Israeli grape juice called Inbalim ענבלים. I presume this is the brand: He asked why the juice had that name. I don't have an actual answer to that question. It's a label from the Arza Winery, and I don't see any official explanation online for that choice. But I can speculate, and I can certainly give more background to the word עִנְבָּל inbal . The word inbal has two…
The Hebrew month of Elul אֱלוּל begins this week, so let's look at its etymology. As with the other names of the months in the current Hebrew calendar, it was adopted in Babylonia, and therefore has Akkadian origin. Klein writes that it derives from an Akkadian word reflecting its function as the beginning of the harvest period: Akka. ulūlu, elūlu (= harvest, harvest time; lit.: ‘the time when the…
Rabbi David Bashevkin (of the enjoyable 18Forty podcast) recently posted on his Substack an essay entitled " The Revival of Hebrew ." It's an interesting review of the history of the renewal of Hebrew and the religious response. I won't cover all of my thoughts about it here (you can read on Twitter/X some of my initial thoughts ), but it mentioned a particular word that I'd like to explore here.…
The Hebrew word for "feeding tube" (or more technically a nasogastric or orogastric tube) is זוֹנְדָּה zonda . This is clearly not a natively Hebrew word. In fact, the Academy of the Hebrew Language coined machder מַחְדֵּר (from the root חדר - "to penetrate, enter") as a good Hebrew alternative. However, I've never heard it used, whereas zonda is common. So where does zonda come from? This site…
Devarim 8:17-18 includes a well-known passage where the people are warned against attributing their successes to their own talents, instead of attributing them to God: וְאָמַרְתָּ בִּלְבָבֶךָ כֹּחִי וְעֹצֶם יָדִי עָשָׂה לִי אֶת־הַחַיִל הַזֶּה. וְזָכַרְתָּ אֶת־יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ כִּי הוּא הַנֹּתֵן לְךָ כֹּחַ לַעֲשׂוֹת חָיִל... A repeated word in these verses is chayil חָיִל. Since the word for…
Someone recently asked me if I had written about the root אמן. I thought for sure I had already, but it turned out I only mentioned it very briefly as a sidenote in this post : Jastrow and Steinberg connect ימין yamin to the root אמן, meaning "firm, steady". There's no question that the root אמן deserves its own post. It's one of the most significant and meaningful roots in Jewish literature over…
The Hebrew root ברא has three distinct meanings. Two are very familiar, one much less so. One meaning is "to create" and is found in the very first verse of the Tanakh: בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא - "In the beginning God created..." (Bereshit 1:1). The noun form of this verb is beriah בְּרִיאָה - "creation." Another is related to healthiness, and is found in such words as bari בָּרִיא - "healthy" and…
Halakha הֲלָכָה can refer to the system of Jewish law as a whole, or the set of laws dealing with a specific subject. Most etymologies connect it to the root הלך, meaning "to walk" or "to go". Here is a sample of those: " something to go by " " the way of walking " " to walk " " walking or path " " a path which a Jew chooses to walk on throughout his/her life " Klein brings support for this…
I was curious about the etymology of Nukhba , the Hamas special forces unit that carried out horrific terrorist attacks on October 7. The root n-kh-b in Arabic means "choose, select, elect," and so nukhba is an elite military unit. It's a fairly common root in Arabic, appearing in many words related to elections. However, I couldn't fnd any Hebrew cognates. The Arabic Etymological Dictionary ,…
I was curious about the origin of the Israeli slang term fukes פוּקְס, meaning "stroke of luck," referring to something positive that happened just by chance. My first thought was to look in Ruvik Rosenthal's Dictionary of Hebrew Slang . He said it came from the English "flux", and originated as a lucky shot in billiards: But as hard as I tried, I couldn't find any connection between "flux" and…
I have a long list of words to write about. Today I started looking into one of them, and then only later did it turn out that I had already written about it. This happens occasionally - with nearly 700 posts, and often several words beyond the primary word discussed in each, I suppose it’s to be expected. I’m just relieved when I discover it before I write the whole thing. This time, however, I…
In the past , I've talked about how I'm a fan of Mike Pesca's podcast, The Gist . Recently, Pesca had a segment, “ Intifada Revolution? Or is that a linguistic delusion? ” (starting at 26:30) where he railed against those claiming that because the Arabic word intifada (“insurrection, uprising”) originated in a more gentle meaning of “shaking off,” the protesters calling for an intifada today…