יום שבת, ה׳ תמוז תשפ״וSaturday, June 20, 2026
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David Curwin resides in Efrat and writes about Hebrew words on his site Balashon. He recently published his first book, “Kohelet – A Map to Eden.”
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By David Curwin
In ancient scripts, the letter was often drawn with a wavy or zigzag shape, fitting for a word connected to water.
By David Curwin
In Hebrew, na’ar shows up in three separate forms: a noun and two unrelated verbs.
By David Curwin
Klal means a general rule or principle, set against prat, the specific case... A klal here isn’t just any rule. It is meant to organize and govern many cases at once, acting as an overall framework rather than a narrow instruction.
By David Curwin
With the arrival of electricity, meanings evolved. Menorah came to mean any lamp or light fixture, while nurah, a modern coinage, was adopted for “light bulb.” That shift left ner to take on its modern meaning: candle.
By David Curwin
Moshe was a Hebrew name from the start, but he also bore an Egyptian name. A key piece of evidence supporting the Hebrew origin is the pun itself.
By David Curwin
The connection between war and welding becomes clearer when we consider that, in ancient times, combat involved close physical contact – just as welding fuses elements together.
By David Curwin
Interestingly, the English word “silver” may also have Semitic origins. One theory suggests that silver derives from the Akkadian word sarapu, meaning to smelt, refine.
By David Curwin
In Modern Hebrew, shama typically means “to hear,” while the other two verbs convey to listen. Yet the earlier nuance of shama persists in the word mashmaut, significance, originally, that which is understood.
By David Curwin
It’s also notable that while the Torah mentions many foreign kings, none of Israel’s leaders, including Moshe, are ever given the title melech.
By David Curwin
While the average Israeli won’t know the word milchig, they will know the English cognate milky. It’s the name of a very popular chocolate dairy pudding.
By David Curwin
Another possibility is that shtreimel is related to the Polish word stroj meaning uniform, clothes. Maybe it meant the “uniform” of those Jews wearing it, or perhaps it also had a specific association with head coverings.
By David Curwin
As noted, mitzvah and tzivah both come from the root tz-v-h. It means to command, order.
By David Curwin
The German word derives from the Indo-European root *skeyt, meaning to cut, part, separate. That ancient root also gave us the English verb to shed, meaning to cast off.
By David Curwin
Since the shofar was blown at the 50th year following seven Shemitta cycles, that year itself became known as a yovel. Eventually, yovel entered English as jubilee, but because of the similarity to the unrelated jubilant, it came to mean the celebration of an anniversary.
