1word1day | Entries tagged with biblical

behemoth [bih-hee-muhth, bee-uh-]

noun:
1 a mighty animal described in Job 40:15–24 as an example of the power of God
2 any creature or thing of monstrous size or power

Examples:

He praised the Strand for "standing up against a behemoth like Amazon. I mean, the fact that they still exist is impressive." (Micah Hauser, Is the Strand a Landmark?, The New Yorker, March 2019)

Built in phases between 1929 and the mid 1950s, London’s Battersea Power Station is, in a word, a behemoth. For scale, the entirety of St Paul's Cathedral could fit neatly within the plant's vast boiler house. (Mayer Rus, Tour a Fresh, Contemporary Home That's Located in a London Landmark, Architectural Digest, August 2023)

Here's a descending list of the world's biggest, heaviest and longest snakes, from the smallest of the serpent giants through to the largest to have ever existed - a behemoth the size of a Tyrannosaurus rex. (Emma Bryce, The biggest snake in the world (and 10 other giant serpents), Architectural Digest, April 2024)

He tells the tedious story of how, before the birth of Man, the world used to be ruled by colossal behemoth monsters, monsters hundreds of miles long! (David H Keller, 'The Last Magician')

A dozen candles burned themselves to death on the shelf before me. Each of my breaths made them tremble. To them, I was a behemoth, to frighten and destroy. (Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings)

Far beneath, they saw a colossal structure of curved and glittering girders, like the strangely articulated bones of a metal behemoth outstretched along the bottom of the pit. (Clark Ashton Smith, Vulthoom)

Origin:

late 14c, huge biblical beast (Job xl.15), from Latin behemoth, from Hebrew b'hemoth, usually taken as plural of intensity of b'hemah 'beast'. But the Hebrew word is perhaps a folk etymology of Egyptian pehemau, literally 'water-ox,' the name for the hippopotamus. Used in modern English for any huge beast. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

In the biblical book of Job, Behemoth is the name of a powerful grass-eating, river-dwelling beast with bones likened to bronze pipes and limbs likened to iron bars. Scholars have speculated that the biblical creature was inspired by the hippopotamus, but details about the creature’s exact nature are vague. The word first passed from Hebrew into Latin, where, according to 15th century English poet and monk John Lydgate it referred to 'a beast rude full of cursednesse'. In modern English, behemoth mostly functions as an evocative term for something of monstrous size, power, or appearance. (Merriam-Webster)

sallymn.livejournal.com

shibboleth [shib-uh-lith, ‐leth]
noun:
1 a A custom, principle, or belief distinguishing a particular class or group of people, especially a long-standing one regarded as outmoded or no longer important' a word or saying used by adherents of a party, sect, or belief and usually regarded by others as empty of real meaning
b a widely held belief
c truism, platitutde

2 a use of language regarded as distinctive of a particular group
b a custom or usage regarded as distinguishing one group from others held belief

Examples:

Herzog was never just a novel; from the beginning it was a symbol, a crucible, a shibboleth. (Nathaniel Rich, American Dreams: Saul Bellow’s Masterpiece of Lamentation, 2017)

Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome 'nerves' or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire (E M Forster, A Room With A View)

Through a relation, friend or neighbour, we are handed down our crafty DNA in the form of DK yarn, an abbreviation for 'double knitting'. DK is often our first shibboleth - this type of yarn is light enough for inexpert fingers to handle easily but sufficiently thick to soon show progress. (Esther Rutter, Purl power: Why I quit my job to knit my way around Ireland and Britain, The Irish Times, 2019)

Thank God I have done with these people and their disgusting shibboleth of respectability. (E Phillips Oppenheim, A Millionaire of Yesterday)

Yet we have a great deal to make us glad, and just now I feel as blithe as a bird. (Martha Finley, The Thorn in the Nest)

Origin:

Mid 17th century from Hebrew šibbōleṯ 'ear of corn', used as a test of nationality by its difficult pronunciation (Judg. 12:6). (Oxford English Dictionary)

The Bible's Book of Judges (12:4-6) tells the story of the Ephraimites, who, after they were routed by the Gileadite army, tried to retreat by sneaking across a ford of the Jordan River that was held by their enemy. The Gileadites, wary of the ploy, asked every soldier who tried to cross if he was an Ephraimite. When the soldier said 'no,' he was asked to say 'shibboleth' (which means 'stream' in Hebrew). Gileadites pronounced the word shibboleth, but Ephramites said 'sibboleth.' Anyone who left out the initial 'sh' was killed on the spot. When English speakers first borrowed 'shibboleth,' they used it to mean 'test phrase,' but it has acquired additional meanings since that time. (Merriam-Webster)

late 14c., the Hebrew word shibboleth, meaning 'flood, stream,' also 'ear of corn;' in Judges xii.4-6. It was the password used by the Gileadites to distinguish their own men from fleeing Ephraimites, because Ephraimites could not pronounce the -sh- sound. Hence the figurative sense of 'watchword' (first recorded 1630s), which evolved by 1862 to 'outmoded slogan still adhered to.' A similar test-word was cicera 'chick pease,' used by the Italians to identify the French (who could not pronounce it correctly) during the massacre called the Sicilian Vespers (1282). (Online Etymology Dictionary)

sallymn.livejournal.com

epistolary [ih-pis-tl-er-ee ]
adjective:
1 (of a literary work) in the form of letters.

2a of, relating to, or suitable to a letter

2b contained in or carried on by letters

3 a lectionary containing a body of liturgical epistles

Examples:

The epistolary format of Semple’s book (piecing together emails, diary entries, memos, and the like) is better suited to unraveling the circumstances of her disappearance. (David Sims, Richard Linklater’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette Is a Gripping Mess, The Atlantic, 2019)

An autobiography in plaster, paint and physical objects, Strawberry Hill was a counterpoint to the 4,000 letters that made Walpole one of the sharpest correspondents of an epistolary age. (Dominic Green, One Man’s Gothic Fantasy, The Wall Street Journal, 2018)

And personally I find my epistolary faculties collapse at about 100° in the shade. (Robert Palmer, Letters from Mesopotamia)

My aunt had written her one of the odd, abrupt notes - very little longer than a Bank note - to which her epistolary efforts were usually limited. (Charles Dickens, David Copperfield)

Novels written in an epistolary format are often less dialogue-driven, with more emphasis on thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Instead of being in the action with the protagonist, most “scenes” are filtered through the character and presented as memories. (Jen Petro-Roy, Writing epistolary novels in the modern age, The Writer, 2019)

Origin:

Epistolary was formed from the noun epistle, which refers to a composition written in the form of a letter to a particular person or group. In its original sense epistle refers to one of the 21 letters (such as those from the apostle Paul) found in the New Testament. Dating from the 13th century, epistle came to English via Anglo-French and Latin from the Greek noun epistolē, meaning 'message' or 'letter.' Epistolē, in turn, came from the verb epistellein, meaning 'to send' to or 'to send from.' Epistolary appeared in English four centuries after epistle and can be used to describe something related to or contained in a letter (as in 'epistolary greetings') or composed of letters (as in 'an epistolary novel'). (Merriam-Webster)

1650s, from French épistolaire, from Late Latin epistolarius 'of or belonging to letters,' from Latin epistola 'a letter, a message' (see epistle). In Middle English as a noun (early 15c.), 'book containing epistles read in the Mass,' from Medieval Latin epistolarium. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

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