shortness of stature

Distinctions

Gomed and gamadim (גומד, גמדים)

The root gimmel-mem-dalet occurs twice in Tanach. Ehud's sword, with which he struck Eglon, was a gomed long (Shoftim 3:16).

• Rashbam (Bava Basra 100a) and Radak (Shoftim 3:16) take gomed as the same unit of measure as an amah.
• Sefer HeAruch, Rashi, and Mahari Kara there take it as a truncated amah, and Rashi uses a cognate of gidem, amputee or cut off, to explain that the sword was less than an amah. Rabbi Yehoshua Steinberg of the Veromemanu Foundation infers from this that Rashi read gomed as a metathesized form of gidem, dalet and mem trading places.

The other occurrence is Yechezkel 27:11, the gamadim who manned the watchtowers of Tyre.

• Rashi and Mahari Kara there first explain gamadim as seamen adept at measuring the depths of the sea with ropes; Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein says this fits Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein's connection of Hebrew gamad to the Ethiopic gwend, "stick," probably a sort of yardstick used to measure a gomed.
• Subsequently Rashi, and Radak there and in Sefer HaShorashim, explain gamadim as short people, no more than an amah tall.
• Targum Yonasan there renders gamadim as Cappadocians.
• Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (1469-1549) in Sefer HaTishbi merges the Targum with Rashi's second explanation to posit that the Cappadocians were a nation of dwarfs, which Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein likens in an aside to the Lilliputians of Gulliver's Travels.

In Talmudic Hebrew the root means contracting or shrinking: Eretz Yisrael has the supernatural property of expanding to hold all its inhabitants when settled, and is gamda, contracted or shrunk, when left uninhabited (Gittin 57a; further examples at Beitzah 15a, Pesachim 111a, Chullin 43a). Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein, no relation to Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, connects this to the Arabic jamada, "stiffening, congealing, hardening." As Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein reads him, his point seems to be that hardening and shrinking are often two sides of one coin, since in hardening matter typically grows more compact and smaller in its dimensions. Gamda also appears in the Gemara as a name or nickname, in Rav Gamda, Rav Chiyya bar Gamda, Rabbi Yehudah ben Gamda, and the Gamda River; and in Modern Hebrew gamad is a garden gnome. Bachur takes gomed to be the native Hebrew word for a short person.

Namuch (נמוך)

Not in Tanach; several times in the Mishnah (Kilayim 4:7, Eruvin 9:1, Zevachim 1:2), and like gamad used of anything low, a short fence as readily as a short man. Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein, echoing Bachur's Sefer HaTishbi, explains namuch as a secondary base form of the nifal of biblical mach, poor or lowered: the grammatical nun prefixed to mach denotes one who has become lowered, and the resulting word, which Bachur vocalizes namoch, is then handled as though the nun belonged to the root. The comparison is to the Rabbinic terumah, derived from the biblical reish-(vav)-mem of raising and lifting and then treated as though the initial tav were root. The root of mach itself is given as mem-vav-kaf (Ibn Janach and Radak), mem-kaf-kaf (Ibn Chayyuj), mem-kaf (Ibn Saruk), or a bare kaf (Rabbi Pappenheim). For more on mach, see Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein's "The Poor and Unfortunate" (May 2019) and the separate entry here on the words for poverty.

Gutz (גוץ)

Neither biblical nor Mishnaic, but used several times in the Gemara, masculine gutz and feminine gutza. Yevamos 106b discusses the halachic differences in chalitzah where the man or the woman is of especially short stature. Bava Metzia 59a cites a popular adage, that if your wife is short you should crouch down to listen to her. Bava Metzia 27b rules that a corpse being merely tall or short is not enough of a clue to confirm the identity of the deceased. Megillah 27b describes Rav Huna as a gutza. And Berachos 31b has Chanah asking that her son be neither too tall nor too short, too skinny nor too fat, too white nor too reddish, too intelligent nor too senseless.

Three etymologies are on the table.

• Rabbi Binyamin Mussafia (1606-1675) in Mussaf HeAruch writes that gutz actually comes from Greek.
• Dr. Alexander Kohut (1842-1894) in Aruch HaShalem disagrees with that supposition, comparing the Hebrew and Aramaic gutz to the French court / curt and the Hungarian kisci, "small," which Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein suggests may be due to the interchange of the gimmel and kuf sounds together with some shuffling of consonants; Kohut's etymology broadly follows his general observation that many languages have similar sounding terms for one phenomenon. Kohut further notes that French curt derives from the Latin curtus, which would relate it to English "short" and to the German and Yiddish kurtz, and modern linguists trace all of these to the Proto-Indo-European root sker-, "cutting," the ultimate etymon of scissors, shear, scabbard, skirmish, scar, shard, sharp, scrape, shirt, skirt and curt.
• Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein calls a third etymology more plausible, an essentially Semitic one: the verb gutz in Aramaic generally means gnawing, biting or cutting off, so a short man is one whose height seems cut off from what one might otherwise have expected. Professor Michael Sokoloff, in A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods, writes that the Aramaic root gimmel-vav-tzadi from which gutz derives is a later form of the biblical Hebrew root kuf-tzadi-tzadi, which also means "cut off."

Nanas (ננס)

The standing Rabbinic word for a dwarf, and the very word Rashi and Radak used in glossing gamadim at Yechezkel 27:11. Bechoros 45b humorously suggests that an especially tall man not marry an especially tall woman, lest their offspring be as tall as a ship's mast, and that an especially short man (nanas) not marry an especially short woman (nanaset), lest their offspring be as short as a finger. Like some of the others it is not confined to people: short boards and walls are nanasin (Rashi to Yoma 16b, Pesachim 64a, and to Yechezkel 40:43). Nevuchadnetzar, a mighty conqueror who was nonetheless short in height, is described as "the nanas of Bavel" (Pesikta DeRav Kahana §13:5; see also Yalkut Shimoni to Daniel §1062). Several Tannaim carry nanas as part of a name, or perhaps a nickname: Ben Nanas (Kesubos 10:5, Gittin 8:10, Bava Basra 7:3 and 10:8, Shevuos 7:5) and Rabbi Shimon ben Nanas (Bikkurim 3:9, Shabbos 16:5, Eruvin 10:15, Bava Basra 10:8).

Bachur in Sefer HaTishbi, having said that the native Hebrew term for a short person is gomed, equates the Rabbinic nanas with the Latin nano and with ninio, "baby" in Spanish; those Latinate words derive in turn from the Greek nanos (so Aruch HaShalem), which English speakers will recognize as the prefix in nanosecond, nanogram and nanotechnology. Nanas is entirely unrelated to the Modern Hebrew ananas, pineapple, which derives from the Peruvian nanas by way of Spanish.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Vaera: The Vertically-Challenged," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 13 January 2024.

Cited in the essay: Shoftim 3:16 with Radak, Rashi, Mahari Kara and Sefer HeAruch; Yechezkel 27:11 with Rashi, Mahari Kara, Radak and Targum Yonasan, and 40:43 with Rashi; Moed Katan 18a; Gittin 57a; Beitzah 15a; Pesachim 64a with Rashi, and 111a; Chullin 43a; Yevamos 106b; Bava Metzia 27b, 59a; Bava Basra 100a with Rashbam; Megillah 27b; Berachos 31b; Bechoros 45b; Yoma 16b with Rashi; Mishnah Kilayim 4:7, Bikkurim 3:9, Shabbos 16:5, Eruvin 9:1, 10:15, Kesubos 10:5, Gittin 8:10, Bava Basra 7:3, 10:8, Shevuos 7:5, Zevachim 1:2; Pesikta DeRav Kahana §13:5; Yalkut Shimoni to Daniel §1062; Radak, Sefer HaShorashim; Rabbi Yehoshua Steinberg; Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur, Sefer HaTishbi; Ibn Janach; Ibn Chayyuj; Menachem Ibn Saruk; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim; Rabbi Binyamin Mussafia, Mussaf HeAruch; Dr. Alexander Kohut, Aruch HaShalem; Rabbi Dr. Ernest Klein; Professor Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods.