While evaluating a dozen or so mutually conflicting theories, one should not be swayed by authority. The Hebrew-Yiddish search for the origin of ghetto should be abandoned. Finally, one of the oldest conjectures traces ghetto to the Latin neuter Giudaicetum вЂњJewish.вЂќ This etymology is indefensible from a phonetic point of view and from almost every other. Since Latin ct became tt in Italian (compare Latin perfe ctus вЂњperfectвЂќ and Italian perfe tto), it was customary to give medieval Italian words a pseudo-Latin appearance. The Yiddish hypothesis makes much of ghectus understood as the Latinized form of gehektes вЂњenclosed.вЂќ However, the spelling ghectus has little value for reconstruction. But this connection seems to owe its existence to folk etymology, for a change from вЂњa bill of divorceвЂќ to вЂњa place of forced isolationвЂќ is hard to imagine. get) вЂњa bill or letter of divorce.вЂќ Allegedly, ghetto goes back to it and stands for вЂњseparation.вЂќ In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Jews believed that this is how the word came into being. Reference books often cite the Hebrew noun get (pronounced approximately like Engl.

We expect an Italian origin of ghetto, but why shouldnвЂ™t the Jews have used their own word for the hateful enclosure, or why shouldnвЂ™t a foreign name for such a place have been used? After all, the word ghetto entered most European languages, including English, and it is a borrowing in all of them. Retracing my route according to the laws of geometry or logic is a dangerous enterprise. But on my way I may meet a friend and go an extra mile with him, get cold and drop into a bar for a drink, or do any other unpredictable thing. If I go from point A to point B, a straight line will be the shortest distance between them. Although this is a natural approach to reconstruction, it need not be confused with the natural order of things in language or anywhere in life. If we again draw blank, we will be bound to explore the vocabulary of some other language that could have influenced the coining of ghetto. If this attempt fails, a Hebrew or Yiddish etymology should be tried. Since the first ghetto was built in Venice, we should first look for the wordвЂ™s origin in some Italian, preferably the Venetian, dialect. In linguistic reconstruction, it is customary to move from the center of the enquiry to the periphery. We donвЂ™t know whether ghetto is a Hebrew, Latin, Italian, or Yiddish word (in order not to complicate matters, IвЂ™ll refer to all the varieties of the Jewish language in the Diaspora as Yiddish, in contradistinction to Hebrew).

The drama is based on a widespread folklore plot of outsmarting the devil.)Д«efore turning to the etymology of ghetto, I would like to answer the question given in the title of this post. Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice around 1594 he never saw a Jew in his life. (In parentheses: the Jews were expelled from England in 1290. The only uncontroversial facts are that the first Jewish ghetto appeared in Venice in 1516 and that in the PopeвЂ™s bull of 1562 the enclosure assigned to the Jews in Rome was called ghectus. Even the information in our best dictionaries should be treated with caution, for not all of them contain the disclaimer that whatever is said there reflects the opinion of the editor (who has rarely studied the vast literature on the subject) rather than the ultimate truth. Linguists, historians, journalists, and well-meaning amateurs have offered various conjectures on the rise of the word ghetto, none of which has won universal approval.

Ghetto word of the day