in-laws

Distinctions

cham (חם) and chamos (חמות)

Root, on the Hebrew side, ח-מ, heat. The wife's words. Yehudah is called Tamar's cham (Bereishis 38:13, 38:25), and Naomi is Rus's chamos (Rus 2:11 through 3:17).

Rav Hirsch: in a traditional patriarchal society a woman marrying leaves her parents' family and joins her husband's, where his relatives stand around her like a chomah, a wall; hence cham and chamos. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim reads the same letters as the biliteral ח-מ, hot: a bride must stress the warm love she receives from her new relatives in order to honor her husband, and love is spoken of metaphorically as fire (Shir HaShirim 8:7), so it makes sense that she names them from the root of heat. The kabbalist Rabbi Menachem Azariah of Fano: the husband's parents do not give their son in the way the wife's parents give their daughter; their contribution is that they gave birth to him, so the words derive from yechemasni ("birth," Tehillim 51:7).

The Pri Megadim (Rabbi Yosef Teomim-Frankel), in a letter on dikduk, suggests working from the Aramaic instead: ח-מ there means "to see," and the Targumim always render Hebrew chosen/choseness with cognates of cham/chamos. A woman's mother-in-law is chamos because she is forever watching her daughter-in-law, for good or otherwise (Yevamos 15:4 presumes that the two are always assumed to hate each other). From the mother-in-law's title the matching word for the wife's father-in-law was formed, and from there the pair spread to a husband's in-laws as well.

chosen (חותן) and choseness (חותנת)

The husband's words, and cognate with chasan. Yisro is called Moshe's chosen thirteen times in Shemos 18:1-27, and the curse on incest with a mother-in-law reads shochev im chosanto (Devarim 27:23).

Rav Hirsch: the husband does not join a new family; his family forms a connection with another family while he remains in his own, so his words for his in-laws are built on connection, like chasan. (The column adds, in passing, that Hebrew and Yiddish have mechutanim for two people whose children have married each other, and that English has no word for that relationship at all.) Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim derives chasan from the biliteral ח-ת, descending or setting down, since the groom branches off from his family to found a new subdivision; his parents-in- law are chosen and choseness because in giving him their daughter they gave him the chance to open that branch. (Radak gives the core sense of chasan differently, as one who experiences a new joy, which is why the word covers a baby at his bris as well as a groom.) Rabbi Menachem Azariah of Fano reads chosen as a contraction of achos nosen, "a sister he gives," on the premise that soulmates stand on a level and a husband and wife may be called brother and sister; the father-in-law is the one who gave this man his "sister," which is why the word can only ever be the husband's.

Pri Megadim on why this pair never widened: chosen names the man who made him a chasan, and choseness was formed from it. Since chasan is by definition the husband's standpoint, the pair cannot be turned around to the wife's, even in Mishnaic Hebrew.

The Mishnaic widening

Radak notes that in Mishnaic Hebrew cham is already used of a husband's father-in-law (Kesubos 1:5) and chamos of a husband's mother-in-law (Yevamos 1:1). Rabbi Shimon Pollack (responsa Shem MiShimon), asked why a man says avi mori of his father but mori vechami of his father-in-law, putting "my teacher" first in the second, offers as one suggestion that chami in that sense is only Mishnaic and rests on Aramaic, so the Hebrew mori is given precedence; whereas for one's father both words are Hebrew. He supports this from the fact that a man who uses the Biblical chosni will usually say chosni mori, both words there being Hebrew.

Rendering guidance

• Render both pairs plainly, father-in-law and mother-in-law. There is no English pair that marks whose in-law is meant.
• Where the passage turns on the difference (Radak's rule, the Pri Megadim on why one pair widened, a drashah on chosen and chasan), transliterate and gloss: "his chosen (his father-in-law, the wife's father)."
• Trap: English "in-laws" absorbs all four words at once, and worse, it hides the gender of the speaker. In a translation of a dikduk discussion, never write "in-laws" as a blanket.
• Trap: cham is also the ordinary adjective "hot," and Cham is a name. Do not let a play on ח-מ (Pappenheim's heat, or the Aramaic "to see") be rendered as though the pasuk itself said "hot."
• Chasan and chosen share a root and look alike in transliteration. Where both appear, spell them apart on the page and gloss the first of each.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Heat with the In-Laws," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 20 Shevat 5780 (2020-02-15): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/8605-heat-with-the-in-laws.md. Primary loci cited: Shemos 18:1-27; Devarim 27:23; Bereishis 38:13, 38:25; Rus 2:11-3:17; Shir HaShirim 8:7; Tehillim 51:7; Kesubos 1:5; Yevamos 1:1 and 15:4; Radak, Sefer HaShorashim; Shem MiShimon (Rabbi Shimon Pollack).