[Lexicog] FW: Hutzpa / hutzpe

[Dr. Hayim Y. Sheynin]

For many times I tried to send this message written immediately after Fritz Goering and Peter Kirk’s discussion on
Lexicographylist, it was not delivered to the members on different reasons. Now I am trying to send it again. 
 
Best wishes,
Hayim Y. Sheynin
 
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From: Hayim Sheynin [mailto:hsheynin19444 at yahoo.com] 
Sent: ד 23 פברואר 2005 22:59
To: Dr. Hayim Y. Sheynin
Subject: Hutzpa / hutzpe
 
To the Lexicography listeners.
 
Several days ago I tried to send this message from my home computer with different email address, but this message was not delivered, since the Yahoo groops accept the messages only from subscribed email addresses. Now I am trying to resend it, even realizing that the interest to this word may have passed. 
 
The word hutspah (from the root het-tsade-peh) is of Aramaic provenance. In Hebrew texts of the Rabbinic period it is frequently interchenged with the segolate noun |hotsef| In the written language it occurs for the first time in Mishnah treatise Sanhedrin 101,105 [about 3rd cent. B,C.) and Aramaic Targum to Jeremia 3:3 (about 1st cent. C.E.) It is generally translated by German Frechheit (insolence, impudence, effrontery, audacity). In the most ancient occurancies it is said mostly on relation of man to God. In the case of Jeremia it is about impudence of a street woman. In the ancient period this was pretty rare word. However when it was adopted in modern Hebrew and especially in Yiddish, the usage was drastically increased, but all the meanings of Frechheit prevailed in relation not only to God, but to also other man or society, The meaning of daring was adopted in time of borrowing the word as Yiddishism in American English, but even increased following publication of a famous book of the same title by Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard professor of Law and an advocate of civil rights..
The regular modern Hebrew meaning is 'insolence'. (Check G. Dalman, Aramaeisch-Neuhebraeisches Handwoerterbuch, Frankfurt a. M., 1922; Even Shoshan, 1960, v.1)
For German I used an older spelling replacing the Umlaut with e after the effected vowel.
 
NB. By the way, it is of interest to the linguists, how the word changed the category of gender.
Hutspa in Aramaic is spelled with aleph after letter peh. In Aramaic this is a definite state of a noun of masculine gender (in Hebrew = ha-hotsef), but Hebrew speakers hear the stress on the last syllable and imagine regular he at the end, which is an ending of feminine gender (exactly like -a in the Latin first declension Nom.Sg., e.g. silva, puella, patria), so in modern Hebrew they write it with he at the end and consider the noun of feminine gender.
 
Hayim Y. Sheynin  
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