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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] etymological fallacy and the meaning of almah

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  • From: Martin Shields <enkidu AT bigpond.net.au>
  • To: b-hebrew Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Cc: kenneth greifer <greifer AT hotmail.com>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] etymological fallacy and the meaning of almah
  • Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2007 13:24:54 +1000

On 31/07/2007, at 11:48 AM, kenneth greifer wrote:

How do you know if the idea that almah means virgin because its root means
"hidden" is an etymological fallacy? I never even heard of etymological
fallacy until a few hours ago, so I really don't know much about it.

You would commit the etymological fallacy if you defined a word based on etymology in such a way that you override other indicators of meaning such as context. You don't have to look far in most languages to see that etymology is frequently quite misleading (the word "nice" is frequently cited as a good English example, because if we were to follow etymology we would assign to it the meaning "stupid, ignorant").

Unfortunately with "dead" languages there are often words so poorly attested that etymology becomes one of the few means at our disposal for determining meaning. However, there remains a very real danger that using etymology to define meaning will mislead us, so any results based purely on etymology should be noted as tentative.

As for ‏עלמה being derived from "hidden," the connection between "hidden" and "virgin" doesn't immediately jump out at me. It could equally be argued that an ‏עלמה was "hidden" because she was not of an age to leave her father's house. There's sufficient ambiguity here to pretty much allow any meaning you want for ‏עלמה to be justified by such an etymological link.

Regards,

Martin Shields,
Sydney, Australia.

P.S. This brings to mind the "reverse" etymological fallacy I've heard used to describe the meaning of the Greek term δυναμις based on the word "dynamite" in English!




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