By Barbara McAllister
Word of the Day: Shibboleth
Shibboleth is an old Hebrew word for an ear of corn. It originally meant a password or code, but has come to mean a distinguishing mode that identifies a particular class of people according to custom, principle or belief. For example, referring to an elevator as a lift would be a shibboleth of a person’s British background.
The word appears almost daily in newspapers. For example, recently The New York Times referred to “several” Trump administration shibboleths to identify beliefs that mark Trump followers, and The Guardian wrote, “It is a shibboleth of constitutional democracy that no man is above the law.”
How did a Hebrew word for corn become an identity code word? Mainly because it was difficult to pronounce. The word appears just once in the Bible, in Judges (12:4-6) which tells the story of the Ephraimites battling the Gileadites. The defeated Ephraimites attempted to flee across the Jordan River. To distinguish their own tribes, Gileadites asked soldiers to pronounce the word shibboleth. If the soldier pronounced the word “sibboleth” without the “sh” sound, as Ephraimites did, they were killed immediately. As the King James Bible version puts it, “He could not frame to pronounce it right and they slew him on the spot.”
The passage in Judges concludes with the statement that 42,000 were put to death based on the difference in enunciation. Might a life have been spared by a lisp?
