rechov

After realizing that I was mistaken in my assumption that kvish כביש - "road" -was an ancient Hebrew word, I decided to write a post about rechov רחוב - "street". Surely that was a biblical word . I knew Haman paraded Mordechai וַיַּרְכִּיבֵהוּ, בִּרְחוֹב הָעִיר - "b'rchov ha'ir" (Ester 6:11) and Zecharia prophesied that old men and women would sit "b'rechovot yerushalayim" עֹד יֵשְׁבוּ זְקֵנִים וּזְקֵנוֹת, בִּרְחֹבוֹת יְרוּשָׁלִָם (Zecharia 8:4).

But as you regular readers of this blog are not surprised to find out, I was mistaken again. While in Modern Hebrew rechov means street, in Biblical and Talmudic Hebrew it meant "a broad open place (in a city), square" (Klein). Only in Medieval Hebrew did it take on the meaning of "street". Today rechava רחבה continues the older meaning of rechov.

While I'm not sure why the term changed its meaning, I can perhaps guess that the teaming of drachim דרכים - "roads" with rechovot רחובות in the Mishna (Shekalim 1:1, Moed Katan 1:2), might have had some influence.

Rechov of course derives from רחב rachav - meaning - "wide". Ben Yehuda writes that this root is the source of a number of proper names of people and places: Rechavam רחבעם, Rechovot רחובות and Rechavia רחביה.

He goes on to say that in Aramaic, the root רוח (revach) was preferred, which has a similar sound and meaning to רחב - and perhaps are related etymologically as well.

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kvish

Well, we have a winner for Kri and Ktiv Game 6! Congratulations to Isaac M on his solution: כביש.

However, I have to admit a mistake I made in the comments. I wrote that:

neither word is particularly "modern" Hebrew...

I just figured that kvish, "road", was so familiar and common that it couldn't be of modern coinage. But once again, my initial assumption was wrong.

Klein provides the following etymology:

paved road [Coined by the author and historian Zeev Jawitz 1848-1924, from כבש]

I don't know if there was any debate about the adoption of this word; Ben-Yehuda doesn't include it in his dictionary.**

From the root כבש - "to tread down, subdue, press" we get a number of words:

• כיבוש - kibush: conquest, capture
• כבוש - kavush: pickled
• כבש - kevesh: ramp (in Divrei HaYamim II 9:18 it is more of a footstool)
• כבשן - kivshan: furnace - Klein says it means "literally 'that which subdues' (metals)"

There is also an opinion that the slang phrase "put the kibosh on" comes from this root, via Yiddish; however others disagree.

A closely related root to כבש is כבס - "to wash clothes", since laundry was done by beating and wringing the clothes. Klein also points out that the roots כפש (to press down) and גבש (to consolidate) may be related.

Almagor-Ramon in Rega Shel Ivrit writes that it's important to pronounce the word for ramp as kevesh, and not keves - which means "lamb". And in fact, Ben-Yehuda, Klein and Kaddari make no connection between the two homographs.

However, Steinberg writes that sheep are known for their trampling, as in Yeshayahu 7:25 - וּלְמִרְמַס שֶׂה - "...and sheep shall tramp about". He goes on to write that "the authors of the dictionaries have strayed from the straight path in their explanation of this word" - i.e. they don't connect kevesh and keves.

I'm not sure exactly which dictionary that preceded him is the object of his criticism. Gesenius connects the two terms by saying that the lamb at that age is "fit for coupling" (i.e. to be subdued). The BDB hints to a connection by mentioning "battering-ram". And Jastrow connects them by saying that the lamb was "thick, strong" (which I guess is often a result of pressure.)

In any case, perhaps Steinberg would have some comfort from an entry in a more recent dictionary. Botterweck and Ringgren discuss this term in their Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (page 43):

Hebrew kebes is related to the common Semitic verb kbs, "overthrow", and kbs, "roll", derived from Akkadian kabasu, "tread (down)". The semantics of kabsu may be explained by the early use of sheep to tread seed into the ground or to tread out grain on the threshing floor; this etymology is supported by the Egyptian parallels sh and sht.

So while כבש might be a good solution for a game of Kri and Ktiv, I wouldn't be able to say with certainty that they aren't related...

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** Update: I now found that Ben Yehuda does mention כביש in his dictionary. He punctuates it as kavish (with a kamatz) and says that it is used in the press and in popular speech meaning "a paved road, made from gravel and earth pressed together." He says that an earlier source for this word is kvisha כבישה - as found in the Aruch's version of Mikvaot 8:1 - where it means a "side path" (according to Jastrow.)

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taarich

Aside from some other distractions, I've been holding off on a post until I was ready to write about remez (remember PaRDeS?). But while it makes sense for me to finish researching that word before I write about it, there's no need for me to stop writing completely. So we'll get back to that series soon, I hope.

A neighbor asked me recently about the Hebrew word for date (as in a statement of time) - taarich תאריך. Was it connected to the root ארך - as in a "length" of time? That seemed logical to me, but I figured I should look it up. Turns out it was an incorrect assumption.

Klein gives the following etymology:

Transliteration of Arabic ta'rih ( = dating, date, time, era; chronicle, annals), infinitive of 'arraha (= he dated a letter, etc. fixed a certain time, wrote the history of something.)

However, since Klein's dictionary is in English, and he doesn't go back further about the origin or Hebrew cognates of arraha - it's too early to say if it is related to ארך.

So I looked in the Hebrew dictionaries. Here the pictures becomes more clear. Ben Yehuda, Even Shoshan and Stahl all say that the Hebrew spelling of the Arabic word ta'rih is תאריח (the chet has an apostrophe at the end - for some reason Blogger isn't letting me place it there.) This is the Arabic letter Ha - which is (sometimes) cognate with the Hebrew chet. (Kaph is a different letter in Arabic and Hebrew.)

So taarich would appear to be related to the root ארח. Note what the Arabic Etymological Dictionary writes:

arracha : fix a date [Sem y-r-ch, Akk warchu (moon), Heb yareach, tarich (date), JNA yarkha (month), Sab warch, Amh war (month), tarik (history), Tig werehh (moon), Uga yrch, Phoen yrch]

Here it is connected to the Hebrew word yareach ירח - "month". But as Horowitz writes, the words ארח and ירח are related:

The root ארח-ירח means "to wander".

The following easily relatable words come from it:

אורח (oreach)- a guest, one who wanders
אורחה (orcha)- caravan, the caravan wandered
אורח (orach)- a path or road that wanders along
ירח (yareach) - the moon - preeminently the wanderer of the sky. The moon is constantly moving about th heavens and hence its name.
ירח (yerach) - is a month. A month is simply the period of time it takes the moon to grow from a crescent, to attain fullness and then to wane. This takes approximately twenty-nine and a half days.
ירחון (yarchon)- monthy magazine

Klein also adds the word for meal - ארוחה arucha. He writes that it probably originally meant "food for the journey".

This root also appears in the Arabic phrase "ruh min hon" - "Go away". Stahl connects these words to ruach רוח - "wind" and rea'ch ריח - "odor" - that wafts, travels in the air.

The only question remaining - and I don't have an answer - is why isn't the Hebrew word for date spelled תאריח? Ben-Yehuda and others quote the mathematician and philosopher Abraham bar Hiyya (1070-1136) as the earliest source for the word (in חשבון מהלכות הכוכבים -"Calculation of the Courses of the Stars"). He lived in Arabic Spain, but unlike his contemporaries, he wrote in Hebrew, not Arabic. He is credited with coining many scientific terms in Hebrew. It doesn't seem likely he would have mistaken a chet for a kaph - but who knows? Actually - maybe one of you?

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