2706: Biblical Monsters Used for Crocodiles May 18, 2024

The Hebrew word for ‘crocodile’ is based off of a semitic root, but not from the one used in Arabic تمساح (timsaḥ) which is also what spread around many crocodile non-inhabiting areas that had Arabic influence, appearing in this form in several Turkic languages. Another Semitic word for a crocodile exists in the Amharic አዞ (azo). While Arabic’s form is from Coptic, originally from an Ancient Egyptian root m-z-ḥ, Modern Hebrew uses a completely different (for the most part) yet also ancient word: תנין (tanin). This is from Biblical Hebrew, frequently mentioned as early as Genesis 1:21, which clearly depicts the תנין as a sea monster, not as a regular animal. This was not a mixed-use word either; Modern Hebrew uses it, as it does for many monster-to-animal word decisions when the language was revitalized as a common, native language in the late 19th/ early 20th centuries. A Hebrew word תמסח (timsaḥ) is also used, but it is highly dated compared to תנין (tanin). One notable inclusion is the translation of the plague of צפרדע (tzfarda(im)) as ‘crocodiles’ instead of the far more common ‘frogs’, which is now also the Hebrew for ‘frogs’.