Is there any connection between the Hebrew words egel עגל - "calf (a young cow or other large mammal)" and igul עיגול - "circle"?
According to this article, by linguist Uzzi Ornan, the connection can be found via cognates in other Semitic languages. In Arabic, the word ajila means "he hurried, hastened" (no connection to the English word agile) and Aramaic has agala עגלא - "speed", found in the adjective ba'agala בעגלא - "quickly, speedily" which appears in the Kaddish prayer.
Ornan claims that this original meaning gave us the word egel - since calves are speedy animals (from my experience working in the dairy farm of the kibbutz I once lived on, I have to agree).
In Hebrew an agala עגלה is a "carriage, wagon", which travels quickly, and it does so because it has round wheels. The word for round in Hebrew is agol עגול, and is related to two words in Hebrew that until my research for this post, I frequently confused - ma'agal מעגל and igul עגול. They both refer to "circle", but ma'agal is the circumference of the circle, and igul is the area of the entire circle. I suppose a way for me to remember this in the future is that ma'agal also means "circuit", which is a circular route (like the circumference of the circle), while igul has a similar form to ribua ריבוע - an (entire) square. Another related word is agil עגיל - "earring."
In Aramaic, the root עגל expanded to the related root ערגל meaning "to roll." Despite my best efforts, I was not able to determine if this root is the ultimate origin of my once favorite Israeli cookie - the Argaliot ערגליות (I never figured out whether the singular was argalit ערגלית or argalia ערגליה - but in any case, I never could eat just one.) I did discover that Osem, who manufactures them now, bought the Argal ערגל bakery in 1982, who originally made them.
But where did that bakery get their name from? Was it from baking "rolls"? From "rolling" the dough? That question still needs an answer.
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