Encyclopedia > Shibboleth

  Article Content

Shibboleth

The term Shibboleth is a Biblical word that literally means "torrent of water". After its usage in the Bible as a way of recognizing a member of a group (the pronunciation of the word was peculiar to this group), the term is used for words or phrases that form part of the specialized jargon of a group, and reveal their users as members of a group.

And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay;

Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.
Judges 12:5-6, KJV

Some shibboleths:

  • Scheveningen: The Dutch pronounce this word beginning with separate "s" [s] and "ch" [x] (not [ʧ]) sounds; a German would pronounce sch as [ʃ].
  • Wanda Jane: this is difficult for Japanese to say properly.

External links



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Sanskrit language

... someone's agent), while "caturtitatpurusha" is a karmadhariya, being both dative, and a tatpurusha. The verbs tenses (a very inexact application of the word, ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 22.8 ms