forehead

Distinctions

Meitzach (מצח)

Thirteen or so occurrences in Tanach, always in the construct form; the vowelization outside the construct is disputed (see below). Targum Yonasan to Shemos 28:38 renders it padachta. On the root:

• Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim ties meitzach to netzach and nitzachon, victory: the forehead is the most noticeable and visible part of a man and so seems to overpower the rest of him. He runs both back to the biliteral צ-ח, though Rabbi Klein remarks that his way of explaining that connection may seem a bit farfetched.
• Rabbi David Chaim Chelouche, late Chief Rabbi of Netanya, offers a more direct connection to the same core: a forehead is generally smooth and hairless, and so is fittingly called tzach, clean and pristine.

The problem at Shemos 28:38

Most commentators hold the tzitz was worn above the forehead, on the place where tefillin are laid, which sits badly with a pasuk that puts it "on Aharon's meitzach."

• The Chiddushei HaRitva and Tosafos Yeshanim (to Yoma 71b) give two answers. Either meitzach does mean forehead and the pasuk means above the forehead; or meitzach means forehead only in the Hebrew of Chazal, while in biblical Hebrew it means the top of the head, or at least includes it along with the brow.
• Tosafos HaShalem (to Shemos 39:28) states outright that meitzach does not mean padachat.

Padachat (פדחת)

Not in Tanach; standard in the Mishnah and Gemara. A child counts as born once its padachat has emerged (Niddah 3:5), and a corpse may be identified for the sake of permitting his widow only when the padachat and the face are intact (Yevamos 120a). Neither text defines the word.

• The identification with meitzach goes back to the Geonim: Rav Hai Gaon in his commentary to Niddah 3:5, and his student to Shabbos 80b; Rabbi Zecharia Aghmati (Sefer HaNer to Shabbos 80b) citing Rav Hai; then Rabbeinu Chananel to Shabbos 80b and the Aruch.
• Rashi glosses padachat as meitzach at Shabbos 151b, Yevamos 120a, Kesubos 75a, and Bechoros 46b, without exception, which Rabbi Klein takes as suggesting that he too understood the two to be perfectly synonymous.
• (Rabbi Yosef de Jong suggests that meitzach is specifically the front of the forehead while padachat takes in the temples as well, though he concedes he has no source for it; the Academy of the Hebrew Language's official anatomical dictionary defines padachat as the Latin glabella, the smooth part of the forehead above and between the eyebrows, which would seem to exclude the temples.)

Where the word came from is unsettled. Its root seems to be פ-ד-ח, and such a root is not attested anywhere else in Hebrew. Dr. Alexander Kohut writes in Aruch HaShalem that padachat is of Persian origin, and Rabbi Klein supports him from the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon Project, which shows that the few places padachat appears in the Gemara and rabbinic literature are the only instances of the word in Aramaic at all; this suggests it is not really an Aramaic word, and if it is neither Hebrew nor Aramaic, Persian is the next logical candidate. Others argue for a Semitic or even a Hebrew basis:

• Rabbi Yaakov Yehuda Zilberberg de Kassif, by metathesis, groups three roots that use peh, dalet, and ches in different orders: dachaf, to push, pachad, fear, and padachat. Haste and confusion often push their way to the forefront of a man's emotions so that fear becomes his dominant feeling, and that inner fear is in turn pushed outward and often shows on his forehead.
• Rabbi Chelouche argues that padachat can be understood as a cognate of metzach, mem interchanging with peh (both sounded at the lips) and tzadi with dalet (as their orthographic similarity in Arabic shows).
• Rabbi Yehoshua Steinberg of the Veromemanu Foundation suggests connecting פ-ד-ח to פ-ר-ח, flowering or blossoming, on the interchange of dalet and reish, which gives something that protrudes or sticks out. That somewhat echoes Rashi (to Shabbos 151b), who describes the forehead as the smoothest and shiniest part of the face and so the part that sticks out most.

The Arabic fadiha

The Arabic fadiha (or fadichah) has entered Modern Hebrew slang for a shameful occurrence, a scandal, or a public shaming. Asked whether it connects to padachat, Rabbi Shaul Goldman offered two possibilities. Either fadiha goes back to the Aramaic ב-ד-ח, happiness or joking (which gives Hebrew bedichah, a joke, and the Hebrew and Yiddish badchan), since words for joyous expression are often used for ridicule as well, the beis morphing into a peh; or padachat and fadiha are related through the sense of exposure, the Arabic verb fadah meaning "to expose," the forehead being the most exposed part of the body and a fadiha an incident that exposes a man's foibles. Rabbi Klein adds a tentative aside of his own, calling it "totally anachronistic," that the facepalm is a very human reaction to an embarrassing situation.

Metzach or meitzach

Because the biblical forms are all construct, they carry a tzeirei (or chirik) under the mem. How to point the absolute form is disputed: some keep the tzeirei, giving meitzach, and others give it a segol, metzach. The practical case is the Yom Kippur vidui, where some siddurim read azus metzach and others azus meitzach.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Foreheads and Fadihot," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 29 February 2020.

Cited in the essay: Shemos 28:38 with Targum Yonasan; Shemos 39:28 with Tosafos HaShalem; Yoma 71b with Chiddushei HaRitva and Tosafos Yeshanim; Mishnah Niddah 3:5 with Rav Hai Gaon; Shabbos 80b with Rabbeinu Chananel and Sefer HaNer; Shabbos 151b, Yevamos 120a, Kesubos 75a, and Bechoros 46b with Rashi; Sefer HeAruch; Alexander Kohut, Aruch HaShalem; the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon Project; the Academy of the Hebrew Language's anatomical dictionary; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim, Cheshek Shlomo s.v. צח; Rabbi David Chaim Chelouche, Ohr Chadash; Rabbi Yaakov Yehuda Zilberberg de Kassif; Rabbi Yehoshua Steinberg; Rabbi Yosef de Jong; Rabbi Shaul Goldman.