HEBREW

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does Hebrew mean? 

• HEBREW (noun)
  The noun HEBREW has 2 senses:

1. the ancient Canaanitic language of the Hebrews that has been revived as the official language of Israel

2. a person belonging to the worldwide group claiming descent from Jacob (or converted to it) and connected by cultural or religious ties

  Familiarity information: HEBREW used as a noun is rare.

• HEBREW (adjective)
  The adjective HEBREW has 2 senses:

1. of or relating to or characteristic of the Hebrews

2. of or relating to the language of the Hebrews

  Familiarity information: HEBREW used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HEBREW (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The ancient Canaanitic language of the Hebrews that has been revived as the official language of Israel

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Hypernyms ("Hebrew" is a kind of...):

Canaanitic; Canaanitic language (a group of Semitic languages)

Domain member category:

Rabbi (a Hebrew title of respect for a Jewish scholar or teacher)

rabbi (spiritual leader of a Jewish congregation; qualified to expound and apply Jewish law)

Hakham (a Hebrew title of respect for a wise and highly educated man)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "Hebrew"):

Modern Hebrew (Hebrew used in Israel today; revived from ancient Hebrew)

Derivation:

Hebraic (of or relating to the language of the Hebrews)

Hebraist (linguist specializing in the Hebrew language)

Hebrew (of or relating to the language of the Hebrews)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A person belonging to the worldwide group claiming descent from Jacob (or converted to it) and connected by cultural or religious ties

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

Hebrew; Israelite; Jew

Hypernyms ("Hebrew" is a kind of...):

individual; mortal; person; somebody; someone; soul (a human being)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "Hebrew"):

Ashkenazi (a Jew of eastern European or German descent)

Conservative Jew (Jew who keeps some requirements of Mosaic law but adapts others to suit modern circumstances)

Essene (a member of an ascetic Jewish sect around the time of Jesus)

Jewess (a woman who is a Jew)

hymie; kike; sheeny; yid ((ethnic slur) offensive term for a Jew)

Levite (a member of the Hebrew tribe of Levi (especially the branch that provided male assistants to the temple priests))

Zionist (a Jewish supporter of Zionism)

Orthodox Jew (Jew who practices strict observance of Mosaic law)

Pharisee (a member of an ancient Jewish sect noted for strict obedience to Jewish traditions)

Reform Jew (liberal Jew who tries to adapt all aspects of Judaism to modern circumstances)

Sadducee (a member of an ancient Jewish sect around the time of Jesus; opposed to the Pharisees)

Sephardi; Sephardic Jew (a Jew who is of Spanish or Portuguese or North African descent)

Wandering Jew (a legendary Jew condemned to roam the world for mocking Jesus at the Crucifixion)

Zealot (a member of an ancient Jewish sect in Judea in the first century who fought to the death against the Romans and who killed or persecuted Jews who collaborated with the Romans)

Instance hyponyms:

Christ; Deliverer; Good Shepherd; Jesus; Jesus Christ; Jesus of Nazareth; Redeemer; Savior; Saviour; the Nazarene (a teacher and prophet born in Bethlehem and active in Nazareth; his life and sermons form the basis for Christianity (circa 4 BC - AD 29))

Lot ((Old Testament) nephew of Abraham; God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah but chose to spare Lot and his family who were told to flee without looking back at the destruction)

Holonyms ("Hebrew" is a member of...):

Jewry (Jews collectively)

Derivation:

Hebraic (of or relating to or characteristic of the Hebrews)

Hebraical (of or relating to the language of the Hebrews)

Hebraical; Hebrew (of or relating to or characteristic of the Hebrews)

• HEBREW (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Of or relating to or characteristic of the Hebrews

Classified under:

Relational adjectives (pertainyms)

Synonyms:

Hebraic; Hebraical; Hebrew

Context example:

the old Hebrew prophets

Pertainym:

Hebrew (a person belonging to the worldwide group claiming descent from Jacob (or converted to it) and connected by cultural or religious ties)

Derivation:

Hebrew (a person belonging to the worldwide group claiming descent from Jacob (or converted to it) and connected by cultural or religious ties)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Of or relating to the language of the Hebrews

Classified under:

Relational adjectives (pertainyms)

Synonyms:

Hebraic; Hebraical; Hebrew

Context example:

Hebrew vowels

Pertainym:

Hebrew (the ancient Canaanitic language of the Hebrews that has been revived as the official language of Israel)

Derivation:

Hebrew (the ancient Canaanitic language of the Hebrews that has been revived as the official language of Israel)

 Context examples 

For myself, I swear by the learned Polycarp that I have most ease with Hebrew, and after that perchance with Arabian.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

We found Hildesheim in his office, a Hebrew of rather the Adelphi Theatre type, with a nose like a sheep, and a fez.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Candidates for this degree typically must complete course work in Greek or Hebrew, as well as systematic theology, biblical theology, ethics, homiletics and Christian ministry.

(Bachelor of Theology, NCI Thesaurus)

In this case I found her biography sandwiched in between that of a Hebrew rabbi and that of a staff-commander who had written a monograph upon the deep-sea fishes.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Our article is the first time such a large body of interdisciplinary evidence has been investigated in this context, said lead author Lee Mordechai of the synthesis center and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

(Justinianic plague not a landmark pandemic?, National Science Foundation)

Half a dozen other sallow Hebrew faces showed how energetically the Jews of Houndsditch and Whitechapel had taken to the sport of the land of their adoption, and that in this, as in more serious fields of human effort, they could hold their own with the best.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The furniture once appropriated to the lower apartments had from time to time been removed here, as fashions changed: and the imperfect light entering by their narrow casement showed bedsteads of a hundred years old; chests in oak or walnut, looking, with their strange carvings of palm branches and cherubs' heads, like types of the Hebrew ark; rows of venerable chairs, high-backed and narrow; stools still more antiquated, on whose cushioned tops were yet apparent traces of half-effaced embroideries, wrought by fingers that for two generations had been coffin-dust.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

In spite of their Unitarian proclivities and their masks of conservative broadmindedness, they were two generations behind interpretative science: their mental processes were mediaeval, while their thinking on the ultimate data of existence and of the universe struck him as the same metaphysical method that was as young as the youngest race, as old as the cave-man, and older—the same that moved the first Pleistocene ape-man to fear the dark; that moved the first hasty Hebrew savage to incarnate Eve from Adam's rib; that moved Descartes to build an idealistic system of the universe out of the projections of his own puny ego; and that moved the famous British ecclesiastic to denounce evolution in satire so scathing as to win immediate applause and leave his name a notorious scrawl on the page of history.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)