One of my favorite topics to write about is the change of meaning in words relating to food. We've already seen that a melafefon originally meant melon, now cucumber, and that botnim, while in modern Hebrew mean peanuts, meant pistachios in the Bible....

Yesterday I was discussing the word parnasa פרנסה on the new Balashon Page on Facebook (please join!). I quoted my post on "pras and prize", where I wrote: The Hebrew root פרס means "to split, divide, break", and a pras therefore originally...

In the post about pashtida, we mentioned how in the Talmud, the verb טפל meant "to paste, to plaster" (dough in the example we brought). But today that root is found in what appears to be unrelated words - for example tipul טיפול - "care,...

In the discussion of shibolet, we mentioned that the Radak described how the Eprhaimites pronounced the word improperly. Here's part of his explanation as to why: אולי היה אויר ארצם גורם להם זה כמו אנשי צרפת...

As I've mentioned before, William Safire was the first language writer I ever read, and a major inspiration for Balashon. Since his death earlier this year, I've been trying to think of a post that would be a worthy tribute to him. Hopefully, this one...