breast

Distinctions

Shadayim (שדים), shad / shod (שד)

Every classical lexicographer (Menachem Ibn Saruk, Ibn Janach, Shlomo Ibn Parchon, Radak) traces it to the two-letter root ש-ד. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim takes the core of ש-ד as abnormality, a departure from the ordinary: the mammary glands secrete nourishing milk, unlike any other limb. He derives from the same root shoded (to plunder, taking or using something outside its normal way), sheid (a demon, which disrupts the natural order), and shidah/shidos (Koheles 2:8), nimble dancers who move like sheidim.

• In Bereishis 49:25 Yaakov blesses Yosef with "blessings of shadayim and rechem," which on a simple reading is breasts and womb as symbols of fertility; archeologists know that many fertility-goddess idols of the ancient world deliberately exaggerated those features for the same reason.
• Others, Rashi among them, tie shadayim there to Aramaic shadi, to shoot or cast, making it the father's contribution rather than the mother's.
• Rabbi Yaakov Chaim Sofer points out that Peirush HaRokeach explains shadayim in that pasuk as clouds that empty out water, as nursing breasts empty out milk, so that shadayim can also mean "clouds."

The largest share of the word's appearances are in Shir HaShirim, and Shaddai, written on the outside of a mezuzah, is sometimes associated with shadayim, Hashem nurturing and sustaining creation.

Two names may carry the word. Pseudo-Rasag (to Daniel 1:7) explains Shadrach, the Babylonian name given to Chananyah, as a portmanteau of shad and rach, "soft," declaring him a refined and delicate person. And Shdeiohr, father of the prince of Reuven (Bamidbar 1:5, 2:10, 7:30, 7:35, 10:18), can be read "breasts of light," or "my breasts are light," or "Shaddai is light."

L'shad (לשד)

Bamidbar 11:8 describes the taste of the man as l'shad hashamen, a hapax whose apparent root ל-ש-ד occurs nowhere else.

• Yoma 75a gives two readings that take the lamed as part of the root: from shadayim, since a nursing infant tastes many flavors in the milk, so the man held many tastes; or from sheid, which shifts its shape and color, as the man shifted its taste.
• Rashi (to Bamidbar 11:8) asks what the first reading has to do with oil and inclines to Dunash, who renders l'shad a loaf.
• Sifrei (Behaaloscha 89) and Tosefta (Sotah 4:1) expand the nursing comparison: the man was Yisrael's main sustenance as milk is an infant's; or, nursing all day never harms a baby, and neither would the man; or, as a toddler suffers at weaning, so were Yisrael pained when it ceased.

Dadim (דדים), dad (דד)

Four times in Tanach: Yechezkel 23:3, 23:8, 23:21, and Mishlei 5:19.

• Menachem Ibn Saruk (Machberes Menachem) and Radak (Sefer HaShorashim) say dadim means exactly what shadayim means, from the two-letter root ד-ד.
• Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim traces it to the single letter dalet, whose sense he takes as separation and protrusion: the breasts protrude and stand apart from the body. He puts in the same family dud (pot) and dudaim, shaped like dadim; dod and dodah, branching off the family line, with dod (a beloved) and yedid; niddah, separated from her husband; nadan/nedunya, a dowry set apart from one's property; nadan, a sheath; and yad, the hand separating out from the body's sides.

• Against the identification, Malbim (Sefer HaCarmel) holds that in Biblical Hebrew shadayim and dadim are different body parts: shadayim the upper breasts from which she nurses, dadim the lower parts, the place of maidenhood. Rabbeinu Chananel, quoted by Rabbi Menachem ben Shimon of Posquieres (to Yechezkel 23:3), reads dadim similarly.
• In Rabbinic Hebrew, however, dadim unambiguously means breasts: Eruvin 54b on Mishlei 5:19, that as an infant finds milk each time he nuzzles the dadim, a talmid chacham finds new taste each time he returns to his learning; Shabbos 53b, the widower whose dadim opened so he could nurse his child; Ben Katin's twelve dadim, breast-like spigots, on the kiyor (Yoma 3:10); and Negaim 6:7-8 on tzaraas, Niddah 5:8 on a girl's development, Bechoros 7:5 on blemishes, Sotah 1:6 on the sotah ceremony, and Keilim 8:11.
• Rabbi Moshe Tedeschi-Ashkenazi (Otzar Nirdafim) keeps them synonymous in sense but separate in origin: shadayim from pouring, dadim an infant's own sound for his mother's breast.
• Rabbi Shaul Goldman suggests, as an alternative, that they may be two forms of one etymon, the shin shifting to tav as often happens moving from Hebrew to Aramaic, and that tav to dalet, the second dalet standing in both.

Several names look to carry dad. Eldad and Meidad (Bamidbar 11:26-27) seem to be El and mei plus dad; so too Elidad, prince of Binyamin at the entry to the land (Bamidbar 34:21). And the foreign kings Hadad of Edom and Ben-Hadad of Aram bear a name that literally means "the breast."

Atinim (עטינים)

A hapax: the wicked man dies at ease, "his atinim full of milk" (Iyov 21:23-25).

• The Ralbag and other commentators read it as breasts, that is, the man's stores are full and he need not scavenge. In Modern Hebrew atinim (singular atin) is the udders of a milk-producing animal, or a human nipple.
• Other explanations in Biblical scholarship include "pail," "vessel," "trough," "watering place," "side/thigh," even "body" (see David J. A. Clines' dictionary of classical Hebrew).
• Rashi (there) points to the Mishnaic cognate maatan, the vat in which olives are gathered so that they give off their oil (Maasros 4:3, Bava Metzia 5:7, Taharos 9:1 and 9:9), and the act of placing them in it (Menachos 8:4): the olive is made to act like a breast and give off liquid.
• Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim traces it to ע-ט, insatiability and stinginess: vaya'at (Shmuel I 14:33, 15:19), scrounging after spoil; ayit, the bird always after more; eit, a writing instrument never done writing; me'at, the little that justifies reaching for more; and atah, wrapping, a lazy way of putting on clothes, stingy in effort. The udder is never at rest, always filling and being emptied.
• Targum to Iyov 21:24 renders atinim bizoi, and Rabbi Nosson of Rome (Sefer HeAruch) explains the Rabbis' bizaya in "woe to the breasts that nursed this one" (Yerushalmi Kilayim 1:7, Bereishis Rabbah 5:9) as that same Greek word. The Greek βυζίου (byziou) is a cousin of the English "bosom," from Proto-Germanic bosmaz, both said to go back to the Proto-Indo-European root bhew-, "swelling," "bending," "curving."

Ziz (זיז)

Yeshayahu 66:11, "you shall nurse and be satisfied from the shod of her consolations, and suckle and delight from the ziz of her honor."

• Radak reads ziz as a form of ziv, glow, and the zemer Shimru Shabsosai paraphrases the pasuk with some nusachos reading ziv.
• Shadal and Gesenius explain ziz as breast, as does Daas Mikra there; they associate the Biblical ziz with the Italian zizza and the German zitze, both of them the teat of a female mammal. Linguists derive those from the theoretical Proto-Germanic titt, and that from the Proto-Indo-European tata, "father," "parent," or "nipple"; Dr. Chaim Tawil, in his An Akkadian Lexical Companion for Biblical Hebrew, notes an Akkadian zizu that also means breast, so that, Rabbi Klein says, it is quite possible the Indo-European words are cognate with their Semitic counterparts.
• Mitchell First argues that ziz refers to any protrusion (see Malbim there), which leads him to speculate that this word for a breast, which protrudes from the bosom, and mezuzah, which protrudes at the side of the doorway, may be related.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Nursing from the Good," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 17 August 2024.

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "On Clouds," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 15 June 2019.

Cited in the essay: Bereishis 49:25 with Rashi and Peirush HaRokeach; Bamidbar 11:8 with Rashi, Yoma 75a, Sifrei Behaaloscha 89, Tosefta Sotah 4:1; Yechezkel 23:3 with Malbim, and with Rabbeinu Chananel as quoted by Rabbi Menachem ben Shimon of Posquieres, 23:8, 23:21; Mishlei 5:19 with Malbim and Eruvin 54b; Shabbos 53b; Yoma 3:10; Iyov 21:23-25 with Rashi, the Ralbag, and Targum there; Yeshayahu 66:11 with Radak, Shadal, Gesenius, Daas Mikra, Malbim and Mitchell First; Daniel 1:7 with Pseudo-Rasag; Bamidbar 1:5, 2:10, 7:30, 7:35, 10:18, 11:26-27, 34:21; Shmuel I 14:33, 15:19; Yerushalmi Kilayim 1:7 and Bereishis Rabbah 5:9 with Sefer HeAruch; Koheles 2:8; Maasros 4:3, Bava Metzia 5:7, Taharos 9:1 and 9:9, Menachos 8:4, Negaim 6:7-8, Niddah 5:8, Bechoros 7:5, Sotah 1:6, Keilim 8:11; Machberes Menachem; Radak, Sefer HaShorashim; Malbim, Sefer HaCarmel s.v. שד and דד; Rabbi Shlomo of Urbino, Ohel Moed; Rabbi Moshe Tedeschi-Ashkenazi, Otzar Nirdafim §74; Dr. Chaim Tawil, An Akkadian Lexical Companion for Biblical Hebrew; David J. A. Clines, The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew.