How apparent synonyms differ
The method behind this guide, drawn from Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Learning to differentiate between apparent synonyms," in Babel: The Language Magazine, May 2020, pages 30 to 33. What follows is a summary in our own words; the article itself is his, and worth reading whole. His weekly column on Hebrew synonyms is at ohr.edu, and he writes for the Veromemanu Foundation.
The question it answers is the one every entry here is an instance of. Hebrew words are held to carry inherent meaning, yet Tanach, Mishnah and Gemara use many words that look interchangeable. Either the tradition is wrong about meaning, or the words are not in fact interchangeable. The rabbinic lexicographers took the second view and worked out how such pairs differ.
Those ways form a short list. Naming which one an entry is using makes the distinction sharper, and keeps a writer from inventing a difference where the real answer is one of these.
Read the original
Rabbi Klein has posted the article himself, so read it from him rather than from a copy here:
- Academia.edu
- ResearchGate
- Babel No. 31, May 2020, the issue it appeared in
The eight mechanisms
1. General against specific (hypernym and hyponym). One word is the umbrella, the other a kind falling under it. Even is the general word for rock; sela, tzur and chalamish name particular kinds.
2. The same thing seen from a different angle. Both words denote one referent but foreground different characteristics of it, so neither is wrong and the choice carries emphasis.
3. Degree along a scale. The words rank. The rock cluster is ranked by hardness; bushah and kelimah by intensity of shame. When a set ranks, the order words appear in a pasuk is itself evidence, which is Bedersi's method.
4. Act against result. Churban is the destroying, cognate with cherev, a sword; shemamah is the desolation that the destroying leaves behind.
5. Scope or setting. Derech is the intercity road, rechov the road within a town; derech is public where netiv is private and for the few (the Zohar's reading); mesilah is paved, mishol is a footpath, maagal runs in a circle, shvil runs downhill, from shafel, low.
6. Speaker's stance. Two words render one English word while carrying opposite attitudes. Ulai and pen both mean "maybe", but ulai accepts the outcome and pen wards it off: ulai for the raffle you hope to win, pen for the illness you insure against. English "maybe" is neutral and loses this entirely, so a translation has to supply the stance some other way.
7. Different language. Eitz is Hebrew, ilan is Aramaic; every one of the six biblical appearances of ilan sits in the Aramaic passages of Daniel. They mean the same thing and are still not synonyms, because they belong to different languages. Under Aramaic influence ilan became the ordinary Rabbinic word for tree and eitz narrowed to wood.
8. Loanword against native word. Rabbinic Hebrew borrows from Greek, Latin, German and later English. A borrowed word standing beside a native one may look like a synonym while differing in register or in precise sense, as lavlar does beside sofer.
A ninth case is not a distinction at all but worth naming: historical displacement, where one word simply supplants another and the older survives in fossilised phrases. When that is the true account, say so rather than manufacture a difference.
The lexicographers
The authorities an entry cites are usually drawn from this line, and the article names them as the canon of rabbis who wrote lexicons of differences rather than thesauruses of sameness:
| Authority | Work |
|---|---|
| Rabbi Avraham Bedersi HaPenini (1230 to 1300) | Chotam Tochnit |
| Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim of Breslau (1714 to 1814) | Cheshek Shlomo, Yerios Shlomo |
| Rabbi Eliyahu Kramer of Vilna, the Vilna Gaon (1720 to 1797) | |
| Rabbi Yehuda Leib Edel (1760 to 1828) | |
| Rabbi Meir Leibush Weiser, the Malbim (1809 to 1879) | Yair Ohr |
| Rabbi Shimon Dovber Analak of Siedlce (1848 to 1907) | |
| Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer (1866 to 1935) |
Using this
When drafting, ask which mechanism is at work before writing the distinction. If none of them fits and no authority draws the line, the honest entry says the sources do not separate the words, which is a real finding and not a failure.
Where the mechanism is clear, name it in the prose in ordinary words: the general term against three specific kinds, the act against what it leaves behind, Hebrew against Aramaic. The reader then has the shape of the answer as well as the answer.
“Learning to differentiate between apparent synonyms,” Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, Babel: The Language Magazine 31 (May 2020), 30–33.