unmarried man

Distinctions

ravak (רווק)

Absent from Tanach; three appearances in the Mishnah, all restrictive: a ravak should not teach young children, should not work as a shepherd, and two revakim should not sleep under one blanket (Kiddushin 4:13-14). Rashi (to Kiddushin 82a) takes ravak as any man currently without a wife, whether or not he was married before. Tosafos and Rambam (in his commentary to the Mishnah there) restrict it to a man who was never married, adducing the Targum to Yeshayahu 40:30, which renders bachurim as revakin; the article records that it does not see how that proves the point. Some versions of Targum to Tehillim 148:12 also render bachur as ravak, and Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur nonetheless omits ravak from his lexicon of Targumic Aramaic, Meturgeman.

On the etymology, Matnos Kehunah (to Vayikra Rabbah 27:2) connects ravak to reik, "empty": the unmarried man is empty of the obligations loaded onto a married one. Rabbi Ernest Klein agrees that the original sense is "empty," from ר-י-ק, so that a ravak is properly a man whose house is empty of wife and children.

The word carries a note of praise, not deficiency. Hashem announces daily that He takes pride in an unmarried man who lives in the city and does not sin (Pesachim 113a), and in the ravak who pays into the community's fund for teaching children though he has none of his own (Vayikra Rabbah 27:2).

panui (פנוי)

Not in Tanach and not in the Mishnah, but frequent in the Gemara (Yevamos 59b, 61b, 76a; Sanhedrin 51a; Temurah 29b-30a). Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur traces it to the Mishnaic verb panah: to clear, empty, open up, make available, be at leisure. The Mishnah's own usage carries it: "Do not say, when I am free (k'she'efneh) I will learn, for perhaps you will never become free" (Avos 2:4). So a panui is a man who is open and available to be bound to a wife, and a penuyah a woman likewise; the Mishnah's mufneh (Yevamos 3:5) is the same word.

Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim works it back to the two-letter פ-נ, "frontside, surface," the root of panim ("face") and pnim ("interior"), the important aspect of a thing, and of the verb panah, turning so that a different side faces front. He gathers under it ofan ("wheel"), pinah ("corner"), pen ("lest"), and peninim (better "precious stones" than "pearls," either for their polished faces and vertices or because they are kept penimah, inside). Clearing, on this reading, is removing what is peripheral so the panim itself shows. Hence pnai, leisure time, and the hermeneutic mufneh, a word in Scripture that is free for exposition. Rabbi Pappenheim says explicitly that panui in the sense of an unmarried man belongs here: he is cleared of the obligations that rest on a family man.

Rashi treats the two words as one in meaning: he calls unmarried men revakim penuyim (to Shemos 12:30) and defines ravak by panui (to Pesachim 113a).

bachur (בחור)

Close to fifty appearances in Tanach, and never exclusively an unmarried man; it is a young man, especially of military age. In colloquial Rabbinic usage it does mean an unmarried male (Kesubos 10a), but it can be said of a married young man as well (Sukkah 26b). Its one Mishnaic appearance is unambiguously about singles: on Tu B'Av and Yom Kippur the girls of Yerushalayim would go out to dance in the vineyards and call, "Bachur, lift up your eyes and see what you choose for yourself" (Taanis 4:8).

Radak (Sefer HaShorashim): the root is ב-ח-ר, "choosing." A young unmarried man is at the peak of his strength and is therefore the choicest candidate for labor or for the army. Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Carpentras (Ohalei Yehudah) says the same and adds that a young man of that age has none of the responsibilities that sap a mature man's energies; alternatively he parses bachur as bo ("in him") plus char ("heat"), for the fire of desire that burns in him.

Rendering guidance

• Ravak: unmarried man, or bachelor where the Tosafos and Rambam reading is in force and never-married is the point. In a halachic passage leave it transliterated and gloss it once.
• Panui / penuyah: unmarried in a halachic context, but where the root is doing work, unattached or free. Mufneh in a hermeneutical context is a different sense entirely: a word left available for derashah.
• Bachur: young man. In a Tanach translation never "bachelor" and never "single"; in modern yeshivah usage, leave bachur transliterated.
• Trap: English "single" will absorb ravak, panui, and colloquial bachur at once. Where Rashi puts revakim penuyim side by side, do not write "single singles"; render it "unmarried men, unattached."
• Trap: bachur and bachir share a root but not a sense. "Choicest" is the etymology of bachur, not a translation of it.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Single Guys," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 16 Elul 5783 (2023-09-02): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/11069-single-guys.md. Primary loci: Pesachim 113a; Vayikra Rabbah 27:2; Kiddushin 4:13-14 and 82a; Yeshayahu 40:30; Tehillim 148:12; Yevamos 3:5, 59b, 61b, 76a; Sanhedrin 51a; Temurah 29b-30a; Avos 2:4; Vayikra 26:9 with Rashi; Bereishis 24:31; Rashi to Shemos 12:30; Taanis 4:8; Kesubos 10a; Sukkah 26b; Radak, Sefer HaShorashim s.v. ב-ח-ר; Matnos Kehunah to Vayikra Rabbah 27:2; Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Carpentras, Ohalei Yehudah. The article's Arabic-loanword proposal and its English etymology of "bachelor" are omitted here per house rule 9.