fbpx

Hebrew Word of the Week: hiqliq

In this age of computers, everyone clicks.
[additional-authors]
December 9, 2016

In this age of computers, everyone clicks. That includes Hebrew speakers: maqliqim (מקליקים) yomam valayla “click day and night.” Hebrew’s hiqliq sounds like the English “click” since both are an imitation of the natural sound klik.* (Similar sound-imitating words exist in other languages, such as klikken in Dutch, cliquer in French, klicken in German, klik kardan in Persian, hacer clic in Spanish.) Compare to similar English sounds: clink, clack, cluck and clock (from the Latin clocca “bell”).

To click in the sense of “hit it off, become friendly upon meeting,” is a metaphorical use. Compare it to the informal Israeli phrase nafal li ha-asimon (נפל לי האסימון), “it hit me, I got it, finally understood what was going on,” literally “my (telephone) token dropped in.” Also the English-French word clique, meaning “a party, small group with a common interest,” originally meant people who “click” together.

* Probably based on the sound of a key in a lock, or latching a door bolt. Compare this with other echoic words: Hebrew’s liqqeq (ליקק) with the English “lick”; and girger (גרגר) with “gargle, gurgle.” 


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

Did you enjoy this article?
You'll love our roundtable.

Editor's Picks

Latest Articles

Post-Passover Pasta and Pizza

What carbs do you miss the most during Passover? Do you go for the sweet stuff, like cookies and cakes, or heartier items like breads and pasta?

Freedom, This Year

There is something deeply cyclical about Judaism and our holidays. We return to the same story—the same words, the same questions—but we are not the same people telling it. And that changes everything.

A Diary Amidst Division and the Fight for Freedom

Emma’s diary represents testimony of an America, and an American Jewish community, torn asunder during America’s strenuous effort to manifest its founding ideal of the equality of all people who were created in the image of God.

More than Names

On Yom HaShoah, we speak of six million who were murdered. But I also remember the nine million who lived. Nine million Jews who got up every morning, took their children to school, and strove every day to survive, because they believed in life.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.