2711: (More) Hebrew Words That Have Shifted Meaning May 23, 2024

Modern Hebrew has lots of names for plants and animals taken from either Biblical- or Mishnaic Hebrew that no longer map onto the animals they once did. In some tamer cases, this would include the modern word for ‘watermelon’ אבטיח (evtiach) which in Biblical Hebrew just meant ‘melon’, or the word ‘cucumber’ קישוא (kishua) now used for zucchini/courgette.  

In more surprising cases, the word for a ‘hippopotamus’ is, at least formally בהמות (behemot) which people may note from the English word ‘behemoth’ colloquially used to refer to a big thing, but which is a Biblical river-dwelling monster, and literally means “animals”: plural in form but singular in nature. That said, many people now say “ סוס היאור” a translation of ‘hippopotamus’ from Greek meaning “river/water horse”, with היאור meaning “river” but more typically “the Nile”. This occurs in other other animal names like קרנף (karnaf), a calque of the Greek “rhinoceros” for “horn-nose”.