linen
At a glance
In short
All four are linen. Pishtim (and pishtah, pishtan) is flax, the raw material. Butz is fine linen as a material, on one view the Aramaic-Hebrew rendering of the Egyptian sheish. Sheish is fine linen thread, six fibers to the strand, and is the Torah's word for the Mishkan's weaving. Bahd is the single-fiber linen thread, from bad, "alone," and it is the word for the Kohen Gadol's white garments on Yom Kippur. Cotton is not in this family at all: it did not exist in the ancient Near East, and where Rabbinic Hebrew needs it, it says tzemer gefen. The modern kotna is not the Semitic kitna, "linen"; Kutscher traces it to katan, "small."
Distinctions
Pishtim (פשתים)
The flax plant and the fiber it yields.
- Ralbag and Abarbanel (to Shemos 25:4): pishtim and butz name linen as a material, while sheish and bahd name particular threads.
- Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim narrows pishtah / pishtan further, to the flax while it is still growing in the ground.
- Rabbi Eliyahu Benamozegh (Eim LaMikra to Vayikra 16:4): etun Mitzrayim (Mishlei 7:16) is linen, and the city of Athens was named for its notables, who wore linen.
Sheish (שש)
- Ralbag and Abarbanel: a thread of six fibers, the number being the word (sheish, six); Rambam draws the same distinction in Hilchos Klei HaMikdash 8:14.
- Some say that sheish is actually an Egyptian word for the choicest grade of linen, with butz as its Aramaic-Hebrew rendering (see Daas Zekeinim to Bereishis 41:42).
- Pappenheim reads sheish as combed linen strands not yet spun into thread, and ties the word to shayish, marble or limestone, for its smoothness.
Two readings explain why Yoma 71b has to prove that sheish means linen.
- The Steipler Gaon (in a letter to Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Schulsinger, Mishmar HaLevi): sheish names a color, whitish, exactly as techeiles, argaman and shni tolaas in the Mishkan passages name colors and not materials; tradition supplies that those three are wool, and the Gemara has to establish that sheish is linen.
- Rabbi Dov Landau, to the same question: sheish is a general term for any dignified garment, so the Gemara must show that in these pesukim it means linen specifically.
Bahd (בד)
From bad, alone, as in levad and hisbodedus.
- Ralbag and Abarbanel: a linen thread of a single fiber.
- Pappenheim: a garment made of linen, and it is called bad, "alone," because in those times linen fabric was never blended with another material, since nothing else held its dye the way linen did.
Zevachim 18b establishes that bahd is linen; on the Steipler's account this is needed precisely because the word by itself only says "alone."
Rabbi Eliyahu Benamozegh (Eim LaMikra to Vayikra 16:4): bad must be linen, since the Kohen Gadol wears garments of bad, as Egyptian priests wore linen.
Rabbi Yosef Karo (Maggid Meisharim, Vayakhel): bad is six in gematria, and sheish also means six.
Butz (בוץ) and kitna (כיתנא)
Butz is the later Hebrew and Aramaic word for fine linen; the Latin byssus, a thin silk-like linen, is said to be derived directly from it. Kitna is the Talmud's Aramaic for linen (see also Targum to Shemos 9:31), and Yoma 71b and Zevachim 18b define sheish and bahd by it. Kitna means linen in several other Semitic languages, Akkadian and Arabic among them, and is possibly even the basis of the Biblical kesones, "tunic": Professor Edward Yechezkel Kutscher explains that the Greeks borrowed the Aramaic kitna as chiton, a linen shirt, which by metathesis became the Latin "tunic." Rabbi Yaakov Zev Lev (Me'at Tzari to Vayikra 16:4) separates the two Aramaic words as Pappenheim separated the Hebrew: kitna is flax unprocessed and still in the ground, butz is linen already worked.
Avi Hurvitz: butz is later than sheish and bad.
Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim, who traces botz, mud, and bitzah, marsh, to the biliteral ב-ץ, a fluid of mucus-like consistency, also asserts that butz (Esther 1:6, 8:15; Yechezkel 27:16) refers specifically to a type of flax or linen that grows in watery soil like that of a bitzah.
Cotton (כותנה, צמר גפן)
Not a Biblical category. Cotton simply did not exist in the ancient Near East, so it makes sense that there would be no Biblical word for it. Some linguists argue that karpas (Esther 1:6) is a loanword from Persian, where it meant a cotton garment; the Latin carbasus and the Greek karpasos likewise refer to a cotton garment. Beside chur and techeiles there, karpas is fairly clearly some sort of fabric, and which sort is disputed.
- Rabbi Saadia Gaon (Tafsir to Esther 1:6) explains it as silk.
- Ibn Janach (Sefer HaShorashim) cites and rejects this, preferring a color, an explanation Rashi and Ibn Ezra adopt as well, and Radak adds that the color is specifically green, as do Ralbag and Rabbi Yosef Nechemias.
- Targum Rishon and Targum Sheini associate karpas with karti, leek.
- The Gemara (Megillah 12a) reads it as a portmanteau of karim, pillows or blankets, and passim, silk.
- Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein, in his etymological dictionary, makes it a loanword from the Persian karpas, fine linen, which he derives from the Old Indian kaprasa, cotton, and the Greek karpasos, fine flax.
Rabbinic Hebrew's common term is tzemer gefen, "vine wool," which happens to be quite similar to the German baumwolle, "tree-wool"; Rambam, in his commentary to Mishnah Kilayim 7:2, correctly renders tzemer gefen into Arabic as al-qoton.
Rashi (to Niddah 17a): milla parhava is cotton.
Is the Modern Hebrew kotna then derived from the Semitic kitna, "linen"? Professor Kutscher answers no, resoundingly. He points to the English cotton, Italian cotone, Spanish algodon and French coton, all of them from the Arabic qoton, and for the Arabic word itself he accepts the etymology proposed by the linguist Sir Godfrey Rolles Driver: the Semitic root kuf-tes-nun, "small," as in the Hebrew katan. Kutscher explains that cotton was called "small" because its fibers tend to run finer and thinner than the hairs of wool, which are much thicker (compare the thin threads called ketini at Shabbos 105a). So on his argument kotna goes back to katan, and its phonetic likeness to kesones / kitna is merely coincidental: kotna really should be spelled with kuf and tes, the others with kaf and tav. Rashi indeed spells the French coton with kuf and tes (Berachos 28b, Shabbos 21a, Shabbos 110b, Niddah 17a). Linguists take the Aramaic pekolin, "cotton tufts," to be borrowed from the Greek phakelos, "bundle" or "fascicle." Cotton, then, is not a type of linen.
Also discussed in
- Marshבוץ / butz (ב-צ)
- Poleבד / bad (ב-ד)
- Vegetable and greenכרפס / karpas
Radak on these roots
Sefer HaShorashim
ב-ו-ץ
Butz is linen: וְתַכְרִיךְ בּוּץ (Esther 8:15), a robe of butz; and the Targum renders מִֽכְנְסֵי־בַד (Vayikra 6:3), linen breeches, with this word.
וְתַכְרִיךְ בּוּץ (אסתר ח, טו), פשתן, מִֽכְנְסֵי־בַד (ויקרא ו, ג), תרגומו מִכְנְסִין דְּבוּץ.
כ-ת-ן
A tunic, כְּתֹנֶת, in several patterns of the noun. A pasuk may name the tunic and the robe together as one, but among the priestly garments they are two.
The word and its plural
פָּשַׁטְתִּי אֶת־ כֻּתָּנְתִּי (Shir HaShirim 5:3), I have taken off my tunic, and of Yosef, וַיַּפְשִׁיטוּ אֶת־יוֹסֵף אֶת־ כֻּתָּנְתּוֹ (Bereishis 37:23), they stripped Yosef of his tunic. The plural is וְהִלְבַּשְׁתָּ אֹתָם כֻּתֳּנֹֽת (Shemos 40:14), and you shall clothe them in tunics, and וַיִּשָּׂאֻם בְּכֻתֳּנֹתָם (Vayikra 10:5), and they carried them in their tunics.
The pointing of the tav
In those two plurals the tav carries a sheva alone, though by rule it should carry a chataf kamatz; in another, exact sefer he found the tav with the chataf kamatz.
Other patterns of the noun
One pattern: וַֽיַּֽעֲשׂוּ אֶת־ הַכָּתְנֹת שֵׁשׁ (Shemos 39:26 in his edition), and they made the tunics of linen, and כָּתְנוֹת עוֹר (Bereishis 3:21), tunics of skin. Another: וַיִּטְבְּלוּ אֶת־ הַכֻּתֹּנֶת בַּדָּֽם (Bereishis 37:31), and they dipped the tunic in the blood; אֶת־ כְּתֹנֶת הַפַּסִּים (Bereishis 37:23), the tunic of passim; and וְעָשָׂה לוֹ כְּתֹנֶת פַּסִּֽים (Bereishis 37:3), and he made him a tunic of passim.
Tunic and robe
At times the tunic and the robe are spoken of as one, since the two seem to be one thing, as it is written וְעָלֶיהָ כְּתֹנֶת פַּסִּים כִּי כֵן תִּלְבַּשְׁןָ בְּנוֹת־הַמֶּלֶךְ הַבְּתוּלֹת מְעִילִים (Shmuel II 13:18), and she had on a tunic of passim, for so the king's maiden daughters were clothed, in robes. But the tunic written among the bigdei kehunah is not the robe, since each of them is a garment in its own right.
פָּשַׁטְתִּי אֶת־כֻּתָּנְתִּי (שיר השירים ה, ג), וַיַּפְשִׁיטוּ אֶת־יוֹסֵף אֶת־כֻּתָּנְתּוֹ (בראשית לו, כג). והקבוץ וְהִלְבַּשְׁתָּ אֹתָם כֻּתֳּנֹֽת (שמות מ, יד), וַיִּשָּׂאֻם בְּכֻתֳּנֹתָם (ויקרא י, ה), התי"ו בשוא לבדו ודינו בקמץ חטף. ובספר אחר מדוייק מצאתי התי"ו בקמץ חטף. ומשקל אחר וַֽיַּֽעֲשׂוּ אֶת־הַכָּתְנֹת שֵׁשׁ (שמות לט, כו), כָּתְנוֹת עוֹר (בראשית ג, כא). ומשקל אחר וַיִּטְבְּלוּ אֶת־הַכֻּתֹּנֶת בַּדָּֽם (בראשית לז, לא), אֶת־כְּתֹנֶת הַפַּסִּים (בראשית לז, כג), וְעָשָׂה לוֹ כְּתֹנֶת פַּסִּֽים (בראשית לז, ג). ופעם יקראו הכתנת והמעיל כאחת, שדומה כי שניהם ענין אחד כאשר כתוב וְעָלֶיהָ כְּתֹנֶת פַּסִּים כִּי כֵן תִּלְבַּשְׁןָ בְּנוֹת־הַמֶּלֶךְ הַבְּתוּלֹת מְעִילִים (שמואל ב' יג, יח), אבל הכתנת הכתובה בבגדי כהונה אינה המעיל, כי כל אחד ואחד בגד בפני עצמו.
פ-ש-ת
Flax. The word is feminine, yet its suffix and its plural come in masculine form; פִּשְׁתֵּי הָעֵץ is flax still in its stalk, which is called wood.
The flax
וְהַפִּשְׁתָּה וְהַשְּׂעֹרָה נֻכָּתָה (Shemos 9:31), the flax and the barley were struck, and וּפִשְׁתָּה כֵהָה לֹא יְכַבֶּנָּה (Yeshayahu 42:3), a dim flax he will not put out.
Masculine forms on a feminine word
The suffix comes in the masculine although the thing is feminine, צַמְרִי וּפִשְׁתִּי (Hoshea 2:7), my wool and my flax; and so does the plural, כַּפִּשְׁתִּים אֲשֶׁר בָּעֲרוּ בָאֵשׁ (Shoftim 15:14), like flax burnt in fire, and בַּצֶּמֶר אוֹ בַפִּשְׁתִּים (Vayikra 13:52), in the wool or in the linen.
Flax still in the stalk
בְּפִשְׁתֵּי הָעֵץ (Yehoshua 2:6), in the flax of the wood, means in the wood of the flax, since it was still in its stalk, and a stalk is called עֵץ, wood. This is found in construct in the holy tongue: at times the governing word becomes the governed and the governed the governing, as תּוֹלַעַת שָׁנִי, worm of scarlet, beside וְאֶת־שְׁנִי הַתּוֹלַעַת (Vayikra 14:6, 14:51), and the scarlet of the worm. It holds where each of the two can stand either way, and everything goes by the sense and the explanation.
וְהַפִּשְׁתָּה וְהַשְּׂעֹרָה נֻכָּתָה (שמות ט, לא), וּפִשְׁתָּה כֵהָה לֹא יְכַבֶּנָּה (ישעיה מב, ג). ובא הכנוי בלשון זכרים ואף על פי שהענין לשון נקבות צַמְרִי וּפִשְׁתִּי (הושע ב, ז), ובא הקבוץ גם כן בלשון זכרים כַּפִּשְׁתִּים אֲשֶׁר בָּעֲרוּ בָאֵשׁ (שופטים טו, יד), בַּצֶּמֶר אוֹ בַפִּשְׁתִּים (ויקרא יג, נב). בְּפִשְׁתֵּי הָעֵץ (יהושע ב, ו), ופירושו בעצי הפשתים כי עדין היה בקנה שלו והוא יקרא עץ. וימצא בסמיכות הזה בלשון הקדש כי פעמים ישוב הסומך נסמך והנסמך סומך כמו תוֹלַעַת שָׁנִי (שמות כה, ד: לו, ח), וְאֶת־שְׁנִי הַתּוֹלַעַת (ויקרא יד, ו, נא), זהו כשיתכן כל אחד מהם סומך ונסמך, והכל לפי הענין והביאור.
ק-ט-ן
To be small, or a small thing in someone's eyes; קָטֹן, small, the lesser or the youngest; and to make small.
The verb
קָטֹנְתִּי מִכֹּל הַֽחֲסָדִים (Bereishis 32:11), I am too small for all the kindnesses, and וַתִּקְטַן עוֹד זֹאת בְּעֵינֶיךָ (Shmuel II 7:19), and this was still a small thing in Your eyes.
The noun
הַמָּאוֹר הַקָּטֹן (Bereishis 1:16), the lesser light; קָטֹן וְגָדוֹל שָׁם הוּא (Iyov 3:19), small and great are there alike; and קָטָנִּי עָבָה (Melachim I 12:10), my little one is thicker, meaning my little finger. With a kamatz, וְדָוִד הוּא הַקָּטָן (Shmuel I 17:14), and David was the youngest.
The plural, and making small
הַקְּטַנִּים עִם־הַגְּדֹלִֽים (Tehillim 115:13), the small together with the great; לַֽעֲשׂוֹת קְטַנָּה אוֹ גְדוֹלָֽה (Bamidbar 22:18), to do a small thing or a great one; and כִּי מִי בַז לְיוֹם קְטַנּוֹת (Zecharyah 4:10), for who has despised a day of small things. To make small is לְהַקְטִין אֵיפָה (Amos 8:5), to shrink the eifah.
Where he settles the grammar
The grammar of קָטָנִּי עָבָה, my little one is thicker, he has set out in the section on grammar that he put before the book, in the gate of nouns.
קָטֹנְתִּי מִכֹּל הַֽחֲסָדִים (בראשית לב, יא), וַתִּקְטַן עוֹד זֹאת בְּעֵינֶיךָ (שמואל ב' ז, יט). והשם וְאֶת־הַמָּאוֹר הַקָּטֹן (בראשית א, טז), קָטֹן וְגָדוֹל שָׁם הוּא (איוב ג, יט) קָטָנִּי עָבָה (מלכים א' יב, י), רצה לומר אצבעי הקטן. ובקמץ וְדָוִד הוּא הַקָּטָן (שמואל א' יז, יד). והקבוץ הַקְּטַנִּים עִם־הַגְּדֹלִֽים (תהלים קטו, יג), לַֽעֲשׂוֹת קְטַנָּה אוֹ גְדוֹלָֽה (במדבר כב, יח), כִּי מִי בַז לְיוֹם קְטַנּוֹת (זכריה ד, י). והמקור מן הפעל הכבד [הִפְעִיל] לְהַקְטִין אֵיפָה (עמוס ח, ה). ודקדוק קָטָנִּי עבה כתבנוהו בחלק הדקדוק שהקדמנו בשער השמות.
Radak, Sefer HaShorashim, Berlin 1847. Public domain, digitised by Sefaria from the National Library of Israel.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Is Cotton a Type of Linen?" What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 16 February 2019.
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Marshes, Marshes, Marshes," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 16 January 2021.
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Metzorah/Shabbos HaGadol: Veggies for the Dipping," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 20 April 2024.
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Is Cotton a Type of Linen?," What's in a Word? Synonyms in the Hebrew Language (book manuscript).
Cited in the essay: Yoma 71b; Zevachim 18b; Targum to Shemos 9:31; Ralbag and Abarbanel to Shemos 25:4; Rambam, Hilchos Klei HaMikdash 8:14, and his commentary to Mishnah Kilayim 7:2; Daas Zekeinim to Bereishis 41:42; Pappenheim, Cheshek Shlomo; Rabbi Yaakov Zev Lev, Me'at Tzari to Vayikra 16:4; Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Schulsinger, Mishmar HaLevi, with the replies of the Steipler Gaon and Rabbi Dov Landau; Esther 1:6 with Rabbi Saadia Gaon's Tafsir, Targum Rishon, Targum Sheini, Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Radak, Ralbag and Rabbi Yosef Nechemias, and 8:15; Yechezkel 27:16; Ibn Janach, Sefer HaShorashim; Megillah 12a; Rabbi Ernest Klein's etymological dictionary; Shabbos 105a; Rashi to Berachos 28b, Shabbos 21a, Shabbos 110b and Niddah 17a; Professor Edward Yechezkel Kutscher, Milim V'Toldoteihen (עמ' 99-101); Sir Godfrey Rolles Driver; Rashi to Niddah 17a; Maggid Meisharim, Vayakhel; Benamozegh, Eim LaMikra to Vayikra 16:4; Mishlei 7:16; Benamozegh, Eim LaMikra to Vayikra 16:4; Hurvitz.