כֻּתְנָה (kutna) — cotton

Etymology

The ancient Hebrews did not wear cotton. Their garments were made of wool or linen — never a mixture of the two, which was prohibited by the law of sha'atnes (Deuteronomy 22:11). Yet the root כ-ת-נ was already in use for garments in the word כֻּתֹּנֶת (a tunic or coat), including Joseph's famous coat of many colors and the priestly tunics described in Exodus. These, however, were linen. The same root exists in all the neighboring Semitic languages: Aramaic kittana, Assyrian kitinnū, and Arabic kattān — all referring originally to linen.

Cotton arrived in the Middle East only around the beginning of the 7th century BCE, introduced by the Assyrian king Sennacherib, whose royal annals describe his military victories — including suppression of the Israelite rebellion — alongside the civilian achievement of planting "wool trees" (cotton). The plant appears in the Bible only once, in the Book of Esther, where the word karpas (כַּרְפַּס) in the description of the Persian court refers not to the Passover celery but to cotton fabric — a Sanskrit loanword (kārpāsa) that arrived together with the crop from India.

Over time, karpas was forgotten. Talmudic sages who no longer recognized the word coined a new term for the cotton plant: tsemer gefen ("vine-wool"), because the cotton plant's leaves resemble those of a grapevine. Rabbi Obadiah of Bertinoro (15th century) glossed tsemer gefen as "the fiber they call quton — and its tree resembles a grapevine." He wrote quton in Hebrew letters with a quf and tet, because that was the Arabic spelling. The Arabic word's own etymology is uncertain: one theory derives it from the Aramaic qatini (thin), which appears in the Babylonian Talmud (Shabbat 105a) distinguishing fine threads (qatini) from thick ones (alimei) — probably cotton versus wool.

During the Middle Ages, Europeans bought cotton from Arab merchants and borrowed the Arabic word. English has cotton, French coton, German Kattun, and Spanish algodón (retaining the Arabic definite article al-). When the Hebrew word kutna was revived in the early twentieth century, the European spelling pattern — with kaf and tav rather than the more etymologically consistent quf and tet — became fixed. In 1947, Va'ad HaLashon tried to correct this by proposing the spelling qutna (קֻטְנָה), but by then it was too late. The form kutna with the "wrong" letters had already taken hold.

Key Quotes

"מוך שקורין 'קוטון' ואילן שלו דומה לגפן" — רבי עובדיה מברטנורא, המאה ה-15 (פירוש על המשנה)

"לֹא תִלְבַּשׁ שַׁעַטְנֵז צֶמֶר וּפִשְׁתִּים יַחְדָּו" — דברים כ"ב, י"א

Timeline

• Biblical period: Root כ-ת-נ used for linen garments (כֻּתֹּנֶת); no cotton in ancient Israel
• 7th century BCE: Sennacherib introduces cotton to the Middle East; "wool trees" mentioned in royal annals
• ~5th century BCE: Book of Esther uses karpas for cotton fabric (a Sanskrit loanword)
• Talmudic era: Karpas forgotten; sages coin tsemer gefen ("vine-wool") for the cotton plant
• 7th century CE onward: Arabic spreads the word qutn across the Mediterranean
• Medieval period: European languages borrow the Arabic word (cotton, coton, Kattun, algodón)
• 15th century: Rabbi Obadiah of Bertinoro identifies tsemer gefen as what is called quton in Arabic
• Early 20th century: Hebrew revives the root כ-ת-נ for cotton, with European-influenced spelling kutna
• 1947: Va'ad HaLashon proposes qutna (more etymologically correct); public ignores it
• Present: Kutna (כֻּתְנָה) is the standard Hebrew word for cotton

Related Words

• כֻּתֹּנֶת — Biblical tunic; the same root applied to linen garments
• כַּרְפַּס — Sanskrit-origin word for cotton in Esther; same word now means "celery" at the Passover seder
• צֶמֶר גֶּפֶן — "vine-wool," the Talmudic name for the cotton plant
• שַׁעַטְנֵז — the biblical prohibition against mixing wool and linen