The Revival of Ancient Hebrew Words With the Revival of Israel

In this study, all the words in the latest edition of the Hebrew Even Shoshan Dictionary (2003) were scanned and ancient words that were not used continuously throughout the Hebrew strata—used in Modern Hebrew in their old or new meaning—were collected. After finding the appropriate words, we examined their incidence in the Gur dictionary (1946) to ensure that the new meanings had not existed then. We have determined the scope of usage by general knowledge and Google Search. The 99 ancient words with new meanings were identified, 39 of which are foreign, according to this distribution: 31 biblical words, 44 words of the Sages, and 24 medieval words. In parallel with the 70 years of Israel’s independence, many ancient words were reintroduced with new modern meanings, to answer the need to create terms for the institutions of the sovereign state and for the masses of Jewish immigrants who spoke foreign languages. Most of the words are from the Mishnah period, the last period in which Hebrew was a living language and adopted foreign words from the developed and advanced cultures of its day. The article presents the innovations of words in different fields, explains it, and answers another questions.

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