There are 'swear words' in the Bible as well, you know? My favourite is /šgl/ (שגל). It appears several times but, everytime it appears as a verb (the noun means "concubine") it's been edited out. The 9th century Tiberian Jewish scholars, known as the Masoretes, edited lots of things out by writing alternatives in the margin. Modern printing tradition still includes the edited-out words, alongside the added-in words, and the added-in words are the ones that are actually read (it's known as qere/ktiv). Anyway, wherever they edited out שגל they changed it for שכב ('to lie down [with]'). שגל by itself actually means... well, I won't say it here.
Let's just say that it has the same semantic range as the monosyllabic transitive verb for "have sex" in English. Sorry, no gutturals in this one...
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
Ah, swearing in Hebrew...
Date: 2006-09-28 06:27 am (UTC)Let's just say that it has the same semantic range as the monosyllabic transitive verb for "have sex" in English. Sorry, no gutturals in this one...