Hebrew word of the week: eqsit

Trendy American words are quickly incorporated into Israeli Hebrew and cherished by the media gossips. They are taken from the English, as seleb (בלס) “celeb,” or selebrita’it for “female celebrity;” a formal Hebrew synonym is yedua’nit (less common).

Eqsit takes informal English ex, meaning “ex (wife),” and adds the Hebrew feminine suffix -it. Other examples are studentit for “female student,” seqsit for “sexy female,” qulit for “cool female.” 

*Spelling foreign words in Hebrew requires that all K sounds — whether from X, K, Q, C — are spelled with the Hebrew quf (ק = q), for example, meqsiqo is “Mexico,” sheqispir is “Shakespeare,” qolombus  “Columbus,” qvarts “quartz,” qumunist “communist.” An exception is aleksander “Alexander,”  which uses a kaf.

Yona Sabar is a professor of Hebrew and Aramaic in the department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures at UCLA.