Not being Israeli, I can’t speak to what sababa really means more than what Google AI tells me – that its roots are Arabic, originally it meant yearning or ardent love, then evolved to meaning excellent or great, and traveled to Israel where it’s now used to mean “cool,” “perfect,” or “awesome.” It seems that we need cool new words every couple of years or so to denote “cool.”
My teenage son is a case in point: last year he and his friends started using the word “bussin” to describe anything he liked, even naming the day camp he started with some friends, “Camp Bussin.” Now “fire” has become his choice term, and I can still remember when everything he liked was “sick.” It seems that “cool” and “great” are just not expressive enough to convey emotion year after year after year.
I recently stumbled on The Etymology Nerd, a Harvard educated linguist who explores the roots of slang and how emojis are changing our language (look him up for infographics on how storms and candy bars got their names or the Latin roots of Harry Potter’s spells). Delving into his work gives you an awareness of the evolution of words and the wonder of language, if nothing else. During a podcast interview with Adam Grant, the two of them started discussing how “adabra cadabra” has its roots in Aramaic and means, “I create as I speak.” Which just goes to show that any discussion of language goes back to Hebrew and the Jews. Totally Sababa. 🙂