Philologos
By Philologos
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News The ABCs of ‘Abecedary’
Harold B. Lehrman writes: “Unable to find ‘abecedary’ in Webster’s New International Dictionary, The Century Dictionary, or the OED [The Oxford English Dictionary], I call upon a philologist to enlighten me. John Noble Wilford used this word in his article ‘A Is for Ancient’ in The New York Times of November 9.” When someone can’t…
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Culture South African Challah?
Michael Cole from Toronto writes: “My wife’s South African relatives refer to a Shabbat or festival challah as a ‘kitke.’ This seems to be a uniquely South African term, unknown, as far as I am aware, even among other people of Lithuanian descent. [Mr. Cole is referring to the fact that South African Jewry originated…
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News Hosanna
Although the holiday of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, is now behind us, it’s not too late for a column related to it. This comes in response to an e-mail from George Jochnowitz, who writes: “On Sukkot, we wave lulavim [palm branches] and pray to God, hosha na, ‘Save [us], we beseech Thee.’ The New…
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News To Dash or Not To Dash? G-d Only Knows
A number of you have written regarding my column of two weeks ago. In it, I commented rather acerbically on the habit some Jews have of not pronouncing the names of such cities as San Diego and Saint Louis, which are named after Christian saints, and on the more widespread custom of spelling the English…
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News Chickpeas
llan E. Mallenbaum from Plainview, N.Y., inquires: “Have you ever delved into the etymology of the Yiddish word arbes, referring to the cooked chickpeas seasoned with ground pepper that my northern Polish grandmother served to guests (like me) many (many) decades ago? I can see possible cognates in Spanish garbanzo and Greek erebinthos. I can…
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News Dating History
The new Jewish year of 5766 that began this week will be called in Hebrew “Tashsav,” after the four letters, e-q-y-z, whose numerical equivalent is 766. (z in Hebrew numerology equals 400; y, 300; q, 60; and e, 6 — the remaining 5,000 generally being unexpressed, although it can be indicated by putting the letter…
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News Upending Chomsky
Although it’s still too early to say for sure, four Israeli scientists may be at the fore of a new revolution in linguistics — or perhaps more accurately, a counterrevolution. The original revolution goes back to the 1950s and is associated above all with the work of Noam Chomsky, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguist…
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News The Dusty Abacus
Avi Atias, my computer technician in Israel, has a small company called Abacus. The other day, I asked him how he came to choose the name. “A friend suggested it,” he said. “I was looking for a word that wasn’t Hebrew and that had an international sound. But, hey, you’re the word man. What language…
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