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- "Do you want a rich man?"
"Do you want a rich man?"
Translation:את רוצָה גבר עשיר?
13 Comments
I'm interested in Dan Fendel's question about the distinction between גבר and איש. I'm hardly an expert, but, while the two words may be synonyms, it seems that איש has more to do with being a man in contrast to being a woman, while גבר has more to do with being a man in the role of hero or a man of valor (גבור). That is, גבר refers to strength, or masculinity, but איש refers to the condition of being a male, but not necessarily to masculinity. Taking this further, I wonder whether איש is just a male person, but גבר implies master of a household. This is just my personal sense of the distinction and would love to hear what others think.
I believe that איש probably used to mean simply "person", a neutral noun, which for being neutra implied the male gender, whereas when referring to a person of the female gender it was required to use the female marker, thus אישה. Much like in Old English the word "man" was the neutral noun and "woman" the female inflection (not sure if it's a folk etymology but apparently the word woman used to mean something like "man (i.e. person) with a womb")
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According to Webster's and also American Heritage Dictionaries, the etymology of woman = wife + man (person). And womb has a completely different root meaning womb or belly. Beware of folk etymologies.