around

Distinctions

saviv (סביב)

Malbim: saviv is not necessarily a complete circuit, though saviv saviv is. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim of Breslau: it means moving around a center in a curving way, and a semicircle or a mere arc qualifies. When Bnei Yisrael went around rather than through the land of the Pelishtim (Shemos 13:18) that is a sivuv, plainly not a full circle, because any roundabout movement whose purpose is to avoid a point (that point being the center of the circle) is a sivuv. The word also works figuratively, of speaking in a roundabout way instead of coming to the point (Shmuel II 14:20).

Pappenheim adds that saviv words usually do mean full circles, and reads a family of words that way: siv, the fibrous bast wrapped around a palm's branches; soveh, a drunkard (Devarim 21:20, Mishlei 23:20, Yeshayahu 56:12), who does his rounds of the taverns (to taste different sorts of drink, or to keep the bartenders from recognizing him, or because he has used up his credit in one shop and must drink at the next); sav, an old man (Iyov 15:10), and saba, a grandfather, who is nearing the close of the circle of his years. Modern Hebrew's sevivon, a dreidel, belongs here rather than under heikef, since a top may stop mid-rotation and never finish its last circle.

Radak, with the Targumim, gives the Aramaic equivalent of ס-ב-ב as sachor; from it a socheirah, a round shield (Tehillim 91:4), and a socher, a merchant, who travels about to sell his wares.

heikef (היקף)

Always a complete circuit. The circumference of a circle is its heikef, and the seven circuits around the bimah on Sukkos and Simchas Torah are hakafos because they ought to be complete circuits. Pappenheim connects kafah/kafui, congealed or frozen, to heikef: such a substance is completely closed within the bounds of its present state and cannot shift shape as a liquid does.

afef (עפף)

"Afafuni chevlei maves... and I would call in the name of Hashem, please Hashem, save my soul" (Tehillim 116:3 to 4). Malbim: the encircling of afef always carries a negative sense, and the root is bound up with pe'ah, a corner (plural pe'os), because it is an enveloping from every corner at once.

chug / chag (חוג / חג)

Radak: a chug is what orbits around another body, as a planet does. Malbim: chug or machug is a circle considered from its center. A chagorah, a belt, is named for encircling the body.

On chag as a festival, Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller: the word's original sense is a circle, evoking the circles of dance that mark a yom tov (Sefer HeAruch and Radak to Shmuel I 30:16 read similarly). On that basis he explains why, of the three the Torah calls a chag, the Mishnah's plain chag is Sukkos: it is the festival most identified with simchah (Devarim 16:15), and so with dancing. Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg differs slightly: chag evokes the festive gait of the olei regel going up to Yerushalayim. Chanukah is never called a chag, which is why the customary greeting is not chag sameach but something on the order of the Yiddish A Lichtege Chanuka, an illuminating Chanukah.

Rabbi Wolf Heidenheim: since ches and ayin interchange, chag is the same word as ag, circle. Hence ugah, a round food such as a cake; agil, an earring; and the Mishnah's account of Choni HaMe'agel, who ag ugah, drew a circle and stood inside it (Taanis 3:8).

Rendering guidance

• Trap: English "around" swallows saviv and heikef both. Give heikef a word that means completion ("circuit," "full circle," "circumference") and keep "around" or "about" for saviv, so that a passage contrasting them still contrasts in English.
• Saviv saviv is not a stylistic doubling to be trimmed. Following Malbim it means "all the way around," and English should say so.
• Shemos 13:18: "led them roundabout, by way of the wilderness," not "led them in a circle." Pappenheim's point is that a detour is a sivuv.
• Hakafos: leave transliterated with a gloss ("the circuits around the bimah"); "processions" loses the completeness the word insists on.
• Tehillim 116:3: afafuni is "beset me" or "closed in on me," never a neutral "surrounded me," if Malbim's reading is being followed.
• Chag: translate as "festival," and bring in the circle sense only when quoting Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller or Rabbi Mecklenburg, marking it as derashah on the word rather than its working meaning.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Around in Concentric Circles," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 9 December 2017 / 21 Kislev 5778: raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/7530-around-in-concentric-circles.md. Primary loci cited: Shemos 13:18; Devarim 16:15, 21:20; Shmuel I 30:16 with Radak and Sefer HeAruch; Shmuel II 14:20; Yeshayahu 56:12; Mishlei 23:20; Tehillim 91:4, 116:3 to 4 with Malbim; Iyov 15:10; Mishnah Taanis 3:8. Two citation notes: the article spells heikef inconsistently, including once as "haifek" (the word is היקף), and it prints Taanis 3:4 for the Choni HaMe'agel mishnah, which is Taanis 3:8. The Rendering guidance above is this guide's own.