לְכָל דָּבָר וְעִנְיָין Growing up I would hear teachers in school use the expression “for all intensive purposes.” I knew what it meant but didn’t think about the words themselves. Only when I saw the expression in a book did the penny drop – it’s “for all intents and purposes.” Now it started making more…
פַּרְווָרִים Every Dose this week introduces a word or expression with origins in Biblical Hebrew, and פרוור – suburb – is no exception. It’s sometimes spelled פרבר, as in: בגלל יוקר המחיה עברנו לפרברים. Because of the high cost of living we moved to the suburbs. Now, פרוור doesn’t look or sound like a Semitic…
נִקּוּד The Hebrew vowel system The system of vocalizing Hebrew text – making it readable phonetically, so that even without understanding the word or context, you could sound it out – is called ניקוד (vocalized, נִקּוּד). The vowel marks themselves are called נקודות – which means literally, points. Early Hebrew speakers who could read, did…
נַחֲלַת הַכְּלָל Hebrew has two words for estate – אחוזה, coming from the root א.ח.ז meaning stronghold, and נחלה of the root נ.ח.ל meaning inheritance (also wadi). אחוזה always refers to a physical estate, sometimes to a mansion. נחלה, on the other hand, can also refer to estate in the abstract sense – domain, if you will. Thus נחלת…