word

Distinctions

milah (מילה)

The original Hebrew term for "word," so Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim (1740 to 1814). It is in Tanach many times: Tehillim 19:5, 139:4; Shmuel II 23:2; Mishlei 23:9; over thirty times in Iyov; and in the Aramaic of Daniel. Teivah in the sense of "word" surfaces only in later rabbinic writing.

Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (1469 to 1549), in Mesoras HaMesores and Sefer Tishbi, notes that many treat the two as identical and rejects it: milah is the spoken word, teivah the written one. Rabbi Yosef Teomim (1727 to 1792) narrows it from the other side: milah covers both written and spoken, while teivah is written only.

On the etymology there are two lines. Rabbi Shlomo Zalman of Hanau (1687 to 1746) derives milah from מ-ל-ל, "speech," the root of Sarah's millel (Bereishis 21:7) and of David HaMelech's mi yemallel gevuros Hashem (Tehillim 106:2). Millel is the standard Targumic rendering of amirah. The Gemara (Megillah 18a) quotes the Eretz Yisrael saying that a milah is worth a sela and silence two, where the opposite of milah is shesikah, which again puts it on the side of speech. On that reading, a milah is the smallest unit of speech that carries a meaning of its own, as against a syllable or a phoneme, which does not.

Pappenheim goes the other way, to the biliteral מ-ל, "edge, extremity." Milah in bris milah is cutting off the extremity; milah as "word" is the unit cut off and standing free of the rest of the sentence.

millel (מלל) as a verb

Distinct from amirah, dibbur, sichah, ne'um, yechaveh and yabia. Peirush HaRokeach and Siddur HaRokeach: millel is speaking at length and elaborately, as in Bildad's ad an temallel eileh (Iyov 8:2). Rabbeinu Efrayim (to Bereishis 21:7): millel, unlike the other verbs of speech, is speaking the truth. Rabbi Yehuda Leib Shapira-Frankfurter (1743 to 1826) is close to that: millel is speaking so as to explain a thing as clearly and exactly as one can, and both cite v'daas sefasai barur mileilu (Iyov 33:3).

teivah (תיבה)

In Tanach teivah is an ark or box: Noach's teivah (Bereishis 6 to 9), and the basket in which Moshe Rabbeinu was placed (Shemos 2:3). In Mishnaic Hebrew it is the shul's ark, or the bimah on which the Torah is laid. HaBachur brings his proof that teivah is the written word from Yevamos 13b, where any teivah needing a lamed prefix may take a hei suffix instead, which is a statement about how the word is written; and from roshei teivos, written abbreviations. Rabbi Shlomo Zalman of Hanau explains the transfer differently: teivah means box, and the written word lives in a box, since the books that hold written words are kept in one.

On the root: Ibn Janach (Sefer HaShorashim) gives ת-ב-ה; Radak (Sefer HaShorashim) offers ת-י-ב as an alternative. Following Radak, Rabbi Yosef Teomim ties Aramaic ת-י-ב to Hebrew ש-ו-ב, "return," on the regular Hebrew shin to Aramaic tav correspondence: what a man puts in a teivah he means to come back for, unlike what he leaves on the floor. Rav Hirsch (to Bereishis 6:14) reads it from Aramaic י-ת-ב, Hebrew י-ש-ב, sitting or dwelling: the teivah was a temporary dwelling, and a word, on that reading, is where letters are lodged. Rabbi Aharon Marcus (1843 to 1916) links teivah to bayis by metathesis, the same letters rearranged, so the teivah is a kind of home; the article extends that to the word as the house in which its letters come together. Rabbi Shimon Yehuda Leib Goldblit reads teivah as a compound of Aramaic ta (come in, Hebrew bo) and bah (into it).

davar (דבר)

Rabbi Moshe Shapiro (1935 to 2017): the striking fact about ד-ב-ר is that it means both "word" and "thing," which points at what Sefer Yetzirah describes, that Hashem made the world by combining the letters of the alef-beis into Divine words. Rabbi Akiva Tatz puts it that everything in the world is a Divine word crystallized into material existence. Rabbi Shapiro brings Shabbos 58b, where implements that produce sound are keilim, "things," for the laws of tumah, as a place where Chazal themselves link davar the thing to speech. The Aramaic milta runs the same double sense, word and thing, as a cognate of milah.

Rendering guidance

• Default renderings: milah "word" (spoken); teivah "word" in a dikduk or Masoretic context, otherwise "ark" or "box" by plain sense; davar "word," "thing," "matter," chosen by context, and where a source plays on both, say so in a note rather than picking one.
• Trap: a discussion of nusach or of a variant reading will use teivah for the word on the page and milah for the word in the mouth. Rendering both as "word" erases HaBachur's whole distinction. Use "the written word" or "the word as written" for teivah where the contrast is live.
• Roshei teivos stays as it is, or "initial letters"; never "heads of words" in running prose.
• Millel in a pasuk: not simply "said." Take the Rokeach's sense (spoke at length) or Rabbeinu Efrayim's (spoke truly) as the context supports, for example Iyov 33:3, "my lips speak knowledge clearly."
• Pappenheim's milah from מ-ל, "edge," is the minority etymology but the useful one for a derashah linking bris milah to speech; where a sefer makes that link, it is his, and should be attributed rather than presented as the plain meaning.
• Mrs. Faigy Peritzman (Mishpacha, 1 April 2020) collects the three as a mnemonic: davar because a word makes an abstract thought a thing, milah because it cuts limitless thought down to something finite, teivah because it boxes the infinite into a casing. Fine as a homiletical aside, not as lexicography.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Words for Words," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach (2021-10-23): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/9405-words-for-words.md. Primary loci: Bereishis 6 to 9, 6:14, 21:7; Shemos 2:3; Shmuel II 23:2; Tehillim 19:5, 106:2, 139:4; Mishlei 23:9; Iyov 8:2, 33:3; the Aramaic chapters of Daniel; Megillah 18a; Yevamos 13b; Shabbos 58b; HaBachur, Mesoras HaMesores and Sefer Tishbi; Ibn Janach and Radak, Sefer HaShorashim; Pappenheim on the biliteral מ-ל; Peirush HaRokeach and Siddur HaRokeach; Rav Hirsch to Bereishis 6:14; Sefer Yetzirah. The article's citation of an academic lexicographer on an Arabic root for teivah, and its speculation deriving English "word" from davar, are comparative philology and are omitted here under house rule 9.