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 simply an amah; Sefer HeAruch, Rashi, and Mahari Kara there take it as a truncated amah, and Rashi uses a form of gidem, amputated, to explain that the sword was less than an amah. Rabbi Yehoshua Steinberg infers from Rashi's wording that he read gomed as a metathesis 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 first explain gamadim as seamen skilled at measuring the sea's depth with ropes, then, together with Radak (there and in Sefer HaShorashim), as short people, no more than an amah tall. Targum Yonasan renders gamadim as Cappadocians; Rabbi Eliyahu Bachur (Sefer Tishbi) combines the Targum with Rashi's second reading and takes the Cappadocians for a nation of dwarfs.

In Talmudic Hebrew the root means contracting or shrinking: Eretz Yisrael expands to hold its inhabitants and is gamda, contracted, when left desolate (Gittin 57a; see also Beitzah 15a, Pesachim 111a, Chullin 43a). 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 used of anything low, a short fence as readily as a short man. Rabbi Eliyahu Bachur (Sefer Tishbi), who vocalizes it namoch, takes it as a secondary base built on the nifal of biblical mach, poor or brought low: the added nun marks one who has been lowered, and the resulting word is then handled as though the nun belonged to the root. The comparison is to Rabbinic terumah, built on the biblical reish-(vav)-mem of raising and then treated as though the 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 Shlomo Pappenheim); see the separate entry on the words for poverty.

gutz (גוץ)

Neither biblical nor Mishnaic, but frequent in the Gemara, masculine gutz and feminine gutza. Yevamos 106b treats the halachos of chalitzah where the man or the woman is unusually short. Bava Metzia 59a: if your wife is short, bend down to hear her. Bava Metzia 27b: that a corpse is tall or short is not enough to identify it. Megillah 27b describes Rav Huna as a gutza. And Berachos 31b has Chanah asking that her son be neither too tall nor too short, neither too thin nor too fat, neither too pale nor too ruddy, neither too clever nor too foolish.

Rabbi Binyamin Mussafia (Musaf HeAruch) held the word to be Greek. The reading the column prefers is the Aramaic one: the verb gutz in Aramaic means to gnaw, bite, or cut off, so a short man is one whose stature was cut off short of what was expected.

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 advises that a very tall man not marry a very tall woman lest their child be a mast, nor a nanas marry a nanaseses lest their child be the size of a finger. Like the others it is not confined to people: low boards and walls are nanasin (Rashi to Yoma 16b, Pesachim 64a, and to Yechezkel 40:43). Nevuchadnetzar is called "the nanas of Bavel" (Pesikta DeRav Kahana 13:5; see Yalkut Shimoni to Daniel 1062). Several Tannaim carry it as a name or 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 (Sefer Tishbi) equates nanas with the Latin nano. It has nothing to do with Modern Hebrew ananas, pineapple.

Rendering guidance

• Trap: "short" will absorb all four. Where a sugya or a commentary pairs two of them, render namuch "low," gutz "stunted" or "short-statured," and nanas "dwarf."
• Gomed in Shoftim 3:16 is a unit of length, not a description of Ehud. Write "a gomed in length" and gloss it once with the dispute (an amah, or less than an amah); "a cubit long" quietly decides the machlokes.
• Gamadim at Yechezkel 27:11 is genuinely contested. Say which Rashi you are following, the sounders or the dwarfs, rather than picking silently.
• In halachic contexts namuch and nanas often describe objects. "A nanas board" is a low board; do not personify it.
• The Moed Katan 18a description of Pharaoh as one amah tall is a statement about stature, and Chazal's word for such a man is nanas. Keep the register plain; the modern clinical vocabulary does not belong in a rendering of a Gemara.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Vaera: The Vertically-Challenged," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 3 Shevat 5784 (2024-01-13): https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/vaera-the-vertically-challenged; raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/11205-vaera-the-vertically-challenged.md. Primary loci cited: Shoftim 3:16; Yechezkel 27:11, 40:43; Daniel (via Yalkut Shimoni 1062); Moed Katan 18a; Gittin 57a; Beitzah 15a; Pesachim 64a, 111a; Chullin 43a; Yevamos 106b; Bava Metzia 27b, 59a; Bava Basra 100a; Megillah 27b; Berachos 31b; Bechoros 45b; Yoma 16b; Kilayim 4:7; Eruvin 9:1, 10:15; Zevachim 1:2; Kesubos 10:5; Gittin 8:10; Bava Basra 7:3, 10:8; Shevuos 7:5; Bikkurim 3:9; Shabbos 16:5; Pesikta DeRav Kahana 13:5; Sefer HeAruch and Musaf HeAruch; Sefer Tishbi; Radak, Sefer HaShorashim. The Ethiopic, Arabic, Hungarian, and Indo-European derivations offered in the original are omitted here.