Israel's organization of technical/marcom writers and copy editors
As the scriptural saying goes. “From all my teachers, I’ve learned.” The Even Shoshan dictionary agrees with King James that when the Psalmist used it, that remark actually meant “I have more understanding than all my teachers.”
Read MoreThe word ma’aneh seems to enjoy staying in reserve while the word tshuva does conversational duty to describe the answer required by an everyday request for directions or by an arithmetic exercise. The word ma’aneh comes out for the bigger questions. Sometimes questions that don’t even come with a question mark. The question of nuclear proliferation. The heat of August. The needs of a particular child.
Read MoreAs a term meaning “childless,” the word ערירי (ariri) is first found where God promises to reward Abram generously and Abram asks what the point of any reward is with no one to bequeath it to: מה־תתן־לי ואנכי הולך ערירי (“what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless” — King James). It’s not the sort of response you’d expect to hear from a childless man today, for example from some elderly bachelor offered a prize on a quiz show.
Read MoreAn English-speaking woman I once worked with would refer to a sturdy, muscular man as a mac, because in the media someone often calls out “Hey, mac!” to such a fellow and she reckoned it had something to do with strength, like a Mack truck. To me it makes as much sense as many other word derivations, but unfortunately none of the dictionary writers have got behind it.
Read MoreSo what are these persistences called in English — these things that can make us perceive inexactly, or act neurotically, for sedimental reasons?
Read MoreEphraim Kishon wrote a story once about a Purim party where the people try hard to celebrate but leave more gloomy than when they arrived. Evidently it’s a failing of ours. When I went to the Internet to research the term “asak”— which refers to the good cheer, informality, and celebrations that go with the approach of graduation from an army course — what I found more than anything else was soldiers looking for ideas of exactly how to cut loose and have fun for the occasion, being without inspiration themselves.
Read MoreOver here in Israel, if I understand my history correctly, the askan was the person who brought funds in to support the poor and their institutions as far back as the 19th century, when the poor and their institutions were pretty much all we had. Our 20th-century socialist pioneers, strong on self-reliance, looked forward to the extinction of the askan and his fellow luftmenschen, and that pioneer contempt is nowhere better expressed than in the Morfix.com definition of askan as “go-getter, politico, wheeler-dealer.”
Read MoreMy paper dictionaries are too old, I regret, to think כוחניות has anything to do with bullies. The three-volume Alkalay refers the reader from כֹחניות to כֹחיות, which it says is the same as כֹחנות, both carrying two meanings. One meaning is vigor — כֹחניות as a benign term, reflecting the way Popeye handles his strength rather than the way Bluto does. The other meaning is potentiality.
Read MoreDictionaries tend to favor the spatial definition of לקראת: The Dvir dictionary says “to meet, towards,” and it mentions that the root is קרא (as in “Hey, you!”). Sivan and Levenston’s Bantam dictionary also says “towards” but it adds the meanings “for” and “in view of,” taking into account that as the time of an occurrence approaches, it influences our behavior. We might say we bought a new electric heater לקראת החורף and mean that we bought it because winter was impending. On the other hand, we might also say that לקראת החורף we bought a new electric toothbrush.
Read MoreIf you have a מוצר איכותי there’s nothing wrong with saying you have a quality product. But as a noun pressed into adjectival service, quality isn’t very versatile. You can say you have a well-known quality product, but not a quality well-known product. You can’t throw quality into a list and say your product is convenient, quality, and attractive.
Read MoreEinat Schiff wrote an article for Walla! titled רשות השידור נגד קרן נויבך - ציניות מוחלטת על חשבון משלם המיסים and the Jerusalem Post referred to the article as “The IBA against Keren Neubach – total cynicism on the taxpayer’s account.” No, that should be at the taxpayer’s expense.
Read MoreIn English, the "vitoor" words don’t mean quite the same with and without the object. Giving something up is not exactly the same as giving up. Conceding something is not exactly the same as conceding. Yielding something is not exactly the same as yielding. Without the object, the meaning for those verbs is more extreme.
Read MoreThe expression מבַלֵי עולם survives from the ancient Jewish sources into the dictionaries, if not into everyday speech, to mean people who waste time or even bring destruction upon the world. These days a little בילוי — a pastime, recreation, entertainment — is widely considered innocent or even necessary in everyday life.
Read MoreThe ambiguity of הסתייגויות and its common translation “reservations” had its finest hour, I guess, when Ariel Sharon accepted the American road map for the Middle East with fourteen reservations. That’s not an acceptance, Arab figures are complaining to this day. Yes it is, Israel says, it just includes reservations. The ambiguity of “reservations” even allowed Mahmoud Abbas, while complaining about Israel’s response to the road map, to Read More
Calvin explains that the use of eshtolel’lu, instead of hishtol’lu, is a Chaldean touch, and that since the verb is reflexive, that is to say “acting on one’s self, it has been here rendered by some, despoiled themselves of mind, were mad, furious.” We are portraying the situation similarly when today we say in slang that someone “lost it.”
Read MoreThe Hebrew said that the mission wasn’t accomplished till the תקינות of the newly developed interfaces was tested. I didn’t have a word for תקינות. I suppose it might have sufficed to say “till the interfaces are tested,” jumping straight past the word.
Read MoreThe word closen means not only “to become close or more close (‘the closening bonds between two countries’) but also “to make close.” It could work as long as you avoid ambiguity and, as the British say, don’t frighten the horses.
Read MoreI don’t find many dictionary definitions of להבדיל. Dov Ben Abba’s dictionary in Signet paperback says “not to be mentioned together,” which makes sense — or at least reasonable partial sense, since whenever we say להבדיל we are indeed mentioning things together, while simultaneously we point out that they are not to be compared except in the narrow sense that we intend.
Read MoreSite for Israel's professional tech writing and marcom community. Originally based in what has become Israel's 2nd largest R&D center (Yokneam), Elephant brings together technical and marcom writers from all over Israel. Behind the scenes and between meetings, members stay in contact with job offers and leads, joint projects, and professional assistance.
Using the wrong technical writer is like using a wrench to open a door, it works, but a door knob is better and cheaper. Elephant was started to help match writers and copy editors with companies where their skills match company needs.
