how to say “fighter” in Hebrew

לוֹחֵם

Hebrew’s word for warrior or fighter is לוחם

when referring to a male and לוחמת

when referring to a female. Israelis use the term to distinguish combat soldiers from non-combat soldiers, whom they call (not always with admiration) jobniks:

הוא היה בצבא לוחם או ג’ובניק?

In the army, was he a fighter or a jobnik?

You might also hear the term לוחם קרבי

– combat fighter or simply קרבי

.

You may have noticed that the root of לוחם is the same as the word for bread – לחם

. That’s because war – מלחמה

– was seen in biblical times as an act of eating one’s enemy. לחם, in Biblical Hebrew, means food in the general sense.

Today is יום הזיכרון

– Memorial Day for Israel’s fallen. Here’s a song that has won over the hearts of the IDF soldiers: כאב של לוחמים

– The Pain of Fighters, by Idan Amedi.