How apparent synonyms differ

What follows is our summary of Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein's article "Learning to differentiate between apparent synonyms," Babel: The Language Magazine, May 2020, pages 30 to 33. The article itself is his, and worth reading in full. He writes the weekly column What's in a Word? at ohr.edu, and is a founding editor of the Veromemanu Foundation.

The question

Jewish tradition sees Hebrew as a holy language whose words express the essence of what they describe. The Kabbalists pointed out that the Hebrew for "word" and for "thing" is the same, davar, reflecting the view that everything in Creation is a Divine word crystallized into material form. Yet Tanach, the Mishnah and the Gemara are full of words that seem to mean one thing; Hebrew has at least eight words for a road or path alone. If every word carries a meaning of its own, why would the language need several for one idea? More than one would be redundant.

Many rabbinic scholars answered that Hebrew has no true synonyms at all. Words that look alike turn out, on a closer look, to differ, and the ways they differ follow a handful of patterns. Once we know the patterns, we can bring them to apparent synonyms in any language. The article does not number them; the list of eight below is ours.

Eight ways the words differ

1. General and specific. Sometimes one word is what linguists call a hypernym, an umbrella term, and the other a hyponym, one kind that falls under it. Take the words for rock: even, sela, tzur and chalamish. Some say even is the general word for any rock, and the others name particular kinds. Others say even is a stone detached from the ground, and sela is rock still attached to it. See even and sela, and tzur and chalamish.

2. The same thing, seen from different sides. Two words can name exactly the same thing, while each draws attention to a different feature of it. This happens with verbs as much as with nouns.

3. Stronger and weaker. Sometimes the difference is one of degree. With verbs, two words may describe one act done to a greater or lesser degree, or with a different intention. Those who make even the general word rank the other rock words by hardness: sela is softer than tzur, and where chalamish falls is disputed.

4. The act, and what it leaves behind. Vayikra 26:31 warns of destruction with two words, churban and shemamah. Since the commentators assume they cannot mean exactly the same, they explain them three ways. Some make shemamah the general word and churban the destruction of a city in particular. Others make shemamah the more severe of the two. A third view says churban is the act of destroying (related to cherev, a sword), and shemamah is the empty desolation it leaves behind. See churban and shemamah.

5. Different settings. Back to the roads. Some explain that a derech runs between cities, and a rechov runs within one. Others say a derech is longer or wider than a netiv. The Zohar says a derech is open to everyone, while a netiv is private, for a select few. A mesilah is a paved road, a mishol a footpath, a maagal a path that goes around in a circle (from igul, circle), and a shvil a path that slopes steeply downward (from shafel, low). See derech and orach, and the other paths.

6. The speaker's attitude. Ulai and pen both mean "maybe", yet in a sense they are opposites. English "maybe" is neutral: it does not tell us whether the speaker wants the thing to happen. Grammarians as early as the fifteenth century, like Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (Elias Levita, 1469 to 1549), held that Hebrew has no neutral word for "maybe". Ulai means the speaker accepts or hopes for the outcome: "I'll enter the raffle, because maybe I'll win." Pen means the speaker rejects it and hopes it will not happen: "I'll buy insurance, because maybe I'll get sick." See ulai and pen.

7. Words from another language. Two words can mean exactly the same thing and still not be true synonyms, because they come from different languages. In most places Tanach calls a tree eitz, but sometimes it says ilan. Look closely and all six times are in the Aramaic part of Daniel (4:7 to 4:23): ilan is Aramaic, not Hebrew. After Tanach, Aramaic's pull on Hebrew was strong enough that ilan became the usual word for tree in the Hebrew of Chazal, and eitz came to mean wood. Hebrew sometimes borrows a word to make a point or for poetic effect, often from another Semitic language, and later Hebrew writing borrows from Greek, Latin, German and even English. Either way, the borrowed word can stand beside a native one as if the two were synonyms, but their different origins show they are not quite the same. See eitz and ilan.

8. An old word replaced. Sometimes, over time, a word falls out of use and another that means the same thing takes its place. The older word may still turn up on rare occasions, alongside the newer one.

The rabbis who wrote on synonyms

Insights into apparent synonyms are scattered through rabbinic writing, from the time of the Talmud to our own day, and some rabbis wrote whole books on the subject. Where a thesaurus such as J. I. Rodale's The Synonym Finder gathers words that mean the same, these books show how such words differ. The article names seven of these rabbis, and most entries on this site cite at least one of them.

• Rabbi Avraham Bedersi HaPenini (1230 to 1300), Chosam Tochnis
• Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim of Breslau (1740 to 1814), Cheshek Shlomo and Yerios Shlomo
• Rabbi Eliyahu Kramer of Vilna, the Vilna Gaon (1720 to 1797), cited from his commentaries, most often on Mishlei
• Rabbi Yehuda Leib Edel (1760 to 1828), Afikei Yehudah
• Rabbi Meir Leibush Weiser, the Malbim (1809 to 1879), Yair Ohr
• Rabbi Shimon Dovber Analak of Siedlce (1848 to 1907), Imrei Rashad, in its section Shem MiShimon
• Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer (1866 to 1935), Beiurei Shemos Nirdafim

“Learning to differentiate between apparent synonyms,” Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, Babel: The Language Magazine 31 (May 2020), 30–33.