Tuesday Word: shibboleth

[ellesieg.livejournal.com]

A shibboleth is a behavior, belief, word, phrase or manner of speaking that is unique to a particular group and that, in the absence of prior knowledge or experience, is very unlikely to be correctly or believably performed, assumed, understood or stated. Thus a shibboleth can serve as a tell or giveaway -- something that enables people to differentiate members from non-members.

Examples of shibboleths in movies:

In Cannibal! the Musical, the group of prospectors encounter a Confederate soldier. They attempt to convince him they are fellow southerners in order to avoid his wrath, but give themselves away during a sing-a-long, when one member of their party ends a verse of "Dixie" with "You stupid Yank!" Though honestly, I'm not sure why that isn't an acceptable alternative to the real words ("Dixie Land")!

In Inglorious Basterds, a British spy posing as a Nazi gives himself away when he orders three drinks by holding up three fingers rather than a thumb and two forefingers, as is the German way. Actually this one contains quite a few shibboleths! Also, corpses.

Shibboleth comes from the Hebrew word shibbólet, meaning the part of a plant that contains grain, such as a stalk of wheat, or a rushing, flooded stream. It acquired the meaning explained above as a result of it having been used, according to an account in chapter 12 of the biblical Book of Judges, by Gileadites to distinguish their own from Ephraimite fugitives following a military victory. Anyone wishing to cross the Jordan River was asked if they were an Ephraimite, and, upon their (very wisely!) answering in the negative, asked to say "shibboleth." As the Ephraimite dialect was apparently lacking in the sort of sh sound found in words like "shoe" and "shudder," Ephraimites invariably sealed their fate by mispronouncing it as "sibboleth."

Comments

[kryptyd.livejournal.com]

That's a word I see knocking around a lot, but I never knew what it meant. Thanks!

I'm not sure if it's the exact same thing since it's simply a pronounciation thing, but when I lived in Holland someone told me a story about a particular Dutch word that Germans find it impossible to pronounce, Legend goes that the Dutch resistance would use this word to try to root out secret Nazis posing as Dutch people trying to infiltrate them. I can't remember the word unfortunately, since loads of Dutch words seemed impossible to me.

[ellesieg.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. :D It actually has a lot of other meanings, though all seem to be related to the primary one/the one I covered. The Wikipedia entry (here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth)) does a good job of covering them all..and has your Dutch word -- Scheveningen!

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

Another historical usage was American prisoners in WWII. They would tap on pipes in Morse code to communicate. The Japanese started listening in to get intel. So, the prisoners would tap the rhythm to "Shave and a hair-cut, two bits", to start each message, which the Japanese simply could not do correctly. So, when they heard it correctly, they communicated, when they heard it incorrectly, they wouldn't reply.

[med_cat]

Interesting word, thanks :) Love the etymology, too, I remember the Biblical story but didn't know the word made its way into English.