זִקִּית (zikit) — chameleon
Etymology
The word זִקִּית was coined by Yehuda Gur and Yosef Klausner in the small Hebrew pocket dictionary they published in 1903. They derived it from the Aramaic word זִקָּא (ziqa), which normally means "spark," "a water vessel," or a type of demon, but once appears in the Aramaic translation of Job (16:3) as a rendering of the Hebrew word for "wind" (רוּחַ). This etymological connection was chosen because of the ancient folk belief — widespread from Ovid's Metamorphoses to Shakespeare's Hamlet — that chameleons live by eating air.
The immediate source was the Talmudic creature called זְקִיתָא (zekita), described in tractate Sanhedrin (108b) as an animal Noah kept on the ark that he fed worms after discovering it by chance. The scholar Yosef Sheinhak first proposed in his 1841 book Toldot ha-Aretz that the זְקִיתָא was a chameleon, based on the connection to wind/air. Lexicographers Moshe Shulbaum (1880) and Marcus Jastrow (1903) repeated the identification, and Gur and Klausner drew on this tradition to create the Hebraized form זִקִּית.
The search for a Hebrew name for the chameleon had begun a century earlier, when Baruch Linda in his 1788 educational work Reshit Limudim called it עַקְרָב (scorpion) — immediately rejected. Throughout the nineteenth century, scholars debated between biblical candidates including כֹּחַ (favored by the Septuagint and Vulgate), כְּרוֹם (a Talmudic creature whose face changes, first proposed in 1863), חֹמֶט, and תִּנְשֶׁמֶת. None took hold. The Aramaic-derived זִקִּית, once introduced in 1903, spread through bilingual dictionaries — most importantly Avraham Kahana's Russian-Hebrew dictionary (1907) — and from there into popular use.
Key Quotes
"יש ציפורים כאלה בערי הים שנקראות כרום וכשהשמש זורחת הציפור משנה את צבעיה" — רב דימי, תלמוד בבלי ברכות ו', ב'
Timeline
- 1788: Baruch Linda proposes עַקְרָב in Reshit Limudim — rejected immediately
- 1841: Yosef Sheinhak identifies Talmudic זְקִיתָא as the chameleon in Toldot ha-Aretz
- 1863: Shlomo Mondliker proposes כְּרוֹם as Hebrew chameleon name in journal Ha-Karmel
- 1880: Moshe Shulbaum repeats the זְקִיתָא–chameleon identification
- 1885: Nahum Sokolov uses כְּרוֹם to mean chameleon in Eretz Hemdah
- 1903: Gur and Klausner coin זִקִּית in their Hebrew pocket dictionary
- 1907: Avraham Kahana includes זִקִּית in his Russian-Hebrew dictionary, spreading the word
- 20th century: זִקִּית becomes the standard modern Hebrew word for chameleon
Related Words
- כֹּחַ — biblical word (Leviticus 11:30); Septuagint and Vulgate identify it as the chameleon
- חֹמֶט — biblical word (Leviticus 11:30); identified by Saadia Gaon as the chameleon (Arabic: harba); now means "skink"
- כְּרוֹם — Talmudic color-changing creature; proposed as chameleon name in 1863; Klausner also used it for hummingbird
- יוֹנֵק דְּבַשׁ — hummingbird, coined by Linda in 1788 (translation of Latin Mellisuga)