בורג (boreg) — screw; to thread through
Etymology
The screw is a relatively modern invention. While nails appear in the Bible (1 Chronicles 22:3, in the context of building the Temple), screws as fasteners are not attested in Europe before the 15th century and only became widespread two centuries later. When Hebrew needed a word for screw in the late 19th century, several coiners competed.
The first was David Frischmann, who in 1883 translated Aaron Bernstein's Naturwissenschaftliche Volksbücher into Hebrew and coined שְרַבּוּב — a loan-translation from German Schraube (itself from Latin scrofa, meaning both "sow" and "digger"). In 1893, Rabbi Yehiel Michal Pines proposed לוּלְבָה, based on the Arabic laulabb — from a root meaning "spiral," related to Hebrew ב.ל.ל (the root of שבלול, snail). Yehoshua Steinberg proposed יתד לולי in 1896.
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda introduced בורג in 1897, in his newspaper Ha-Tzvi, in a report on a phonograph demonstration: "along the cylinder runs a groove shaped like a boreg." He derived it from the Arabic burghiyy, itself borrowed from Turkish, originally meaning "spiral." Competing terms continued to appear: Benjamin Szerszevski proposed סְלִיל in 1911, and dictionaries through the 1940s still listed לולבה and לולב as alternatives. The decisive moment came in 1919, when the labor newspaper Ha-Po'el Ha-Tza'ir published a "List of Work Tools" compiled by a craftsman, N. Shaphreis, which used בורג. Since working people adopted this list as practical guidance, בורג became the term on construction sites and in workshops, and the alternatives faded.
The same 1919 list coined סַבְרָג for what we now call מַבְרֵג (screwdriver). The word מברג appeared in dictionaries in 1927, initially as a synonym for סברג, but within a few years it had displaced the rival form entirely — as illustrated by a 1933 murder trial in which a מברג was used to assemble a pipe bomb.
The verb להתברג (to screw in, to thread through) developed in the 1930s with a literal sense. It was sportswriter Zh'ako Parhi of Al HaMishmar who, in 1947, extended it to mean weaving through a defense in a spiral-like path in football. By the 1980s this sense had migrated from sports journalism into everyday Hebrew, where להתברג means to squeeze or thread into a tight space.
Key Quotes
"על פני הגליל הולכת חריץ בצורת בֹרֶג, וכסה יכסהו בעלה דק של בדיל והדקוהו סביב הגליל בדיוק" — אליעזר בן-יהודה, הצבי, 1897
"י. מרימוביץ׳ ׳מתברג׳ בתוך הגנת היריב ולאחר שהספיק למשוך אליו את היריב מעביר מסירה ארוכה בפינה השמאלית לי. פוקס." — ז'אקו פרחי, על המשמר, 1947
Timeline
- 1883: David Frischmann coins שרבוב (from German Schraube) in his translation of Bernstein's science book
- 1893: Rabbi Pines coins לולבה (from Arabic laulabb) in Ha-Ko'ah
- 1896: Yehoshua Steinberg proposes יתד לולי
- 1897: Ben-Yehuda introduces בורג in Ha-Tzvi, in a phonograph report
- 1911: Benjamin Szerszevski proposes סליל
- 1919: Ha-Po'el Ha-Tza'ir labor newspaper adopts בורג in a tool-name list by craftsman Shaphreis; this settles the popular contest
- 1927: מברג first appears in dictionaries (Gur-Yellin and Lazar-Tur-Sinai)
- 1933: מברג used in a murder-trial press report — first unglossed use in journalism
- 1930s: להתברג enters use with literal threading/connecting meaning
- 1947: Zh'ako Parhi gives להתברג its sports meaning (weaving through defenders)
- 1951: Extended non-sports use of מתברג documented in Davar
- Early 1980s: Figurative sense migrates from sports to general Hebrew
Related Words
- מברג — screwdriver; from בורג; displaced סברג (coined 1919) by the early 1930s
- לולב — palm branch (Sukkot); possibly related to the spiral-root via Arabic, though ancient connection is uncertain
- שבלול — snail; from root ב.ל.ל (spiral), cognate with the Arabic root behind לולבה