Tag Archives: humor

New Aramaic Word Coined

Today, my daughter helped coin a new Aramaic phrase to use in time for the mushroom hunting season:


תרנגלא דחורשא

With the above, this would only follow naturally:

תרנגולתא דחורשא

(More info here. 🙂 )

But perhaps it might be better to swap things around a bit. In the mushroom world, there is the “Chicken of the Woods” (Laetiporous sp.) “Hen of the Woods” (Grifola frondosa) and what some people call the “Rooster of the Woods” (Meripilus sp.).

Since Galilean Aramaic really has no individual word for “chicken” (only “rooster” and “hen,” the latter generally used for generically referring to the species itself as a whole) perhaps it might be better to refer to “Chicken of the Woods” as תרנגולתא דחורשא, “Hen of the Woods” under its other common name “Sheep’s Head” which would make it something like ראשא דאימרא (the Galilean spelling of ריש is ראש) and reserve תרנגלא דחורשא for “Rooster of the Woods.”

Or maybe one could even make it even more descriptive, dropping דחורשא (“of the woods”) entirely and use a compound with ערדא (“mushroom”) instead…

And it is here that I find I may be over-thinking the issue. 🙂

Anyways back to work with me… .

Peace,
-Steve