פַּרְגִּית (pargit) — young chicken; boneless chicken thigh fillet
Etymology
The word פַּרְגִּית appears in Talmudic literature as a type of meat. In Berakhot 39a, the Talmud recounts that at a meal, someone was given dates, cabbage, and "pargiyot" and was granted the right to recite one blessing over all of them; the person chose to bless the pargiyot first, which prompted a companion to mock him as someone who "never ate meat and never tasted it in his life." From context, the word clearly denotes a desirable meat dish, but no further identification is given.
Two medieval commentators offer conflicting identifications. Rashi (11th-century France) says pargiyot are "the birds called parderia" — a partridge or francolin. Nathan of Rome, author of the lexicon "Arukh," disagrees: he says that while some identify pargiyot as small birds (partridges?), in his view "pargin means small chickens, and in Arabic (leshon Yishmael) they call them farig, and one is called parguta." Nathan, who knew Arabic unlike Rashi, identified a cognate in Arabic and concluded the word referred to young chickens. Both identifications circulated in Modern Hebrew's revival period.
When Hebrew was revived in the 20th century, פַּרְגִּית was pressed into service for multiple purposes: those following Rashi used it for "partridge" (a 1931 Horace translation renders it as "guinea hen or pargit from Ionia"); Yitzhak Dov Berkowitz used it in his Yiddish-to-Hebrew translations of Sholem Aleichem to mean a "poppy-seed pastry" (grasping at the phonetic similarity to פֶּרֶג, "poppy"); and kibbutz and moshav poultry farmers, following Nathan of Rome, used it to mean "young hen." The last usage prevailed after statehood, and the word was officially standardized as "young hen" (a pullet older than eight days and younger than five months).
The modern culinary meaning — boneless chicken thigh fillets — is attributed by oral tradition to Yehuda Avazi, a restaurateur in the Hatikva neighborhood of Tel Aviv. Avazi, who had a colorful criminal record (convictions for auto theft, arson, alleged sexual assault, and unlicensed driving between 1965 and 1988), opened his restaurant around 1970. He is said to have invented the marketing name "pargit shishlik" or "pargit steak" for the meat stripped from chicken thigh bones. Since virtually all commercially raised chickens in Israel are slaughtered at 40 days and thus technically qualify as pargiyot by definition, the name was not false advertising — just a rebranding. Other grill restaurants adopted the term, butchers began stocking "pargit," and the word entered the supermarket lexicon for boneless chicken thigh fillet.
The word has no exact English equivalent. "Pullet" (a young hen before first laying) and "spring chicken" are both technically inaccurate translations, and the correct anatomical term "boneless skinless chicken thigh fillets" is cumbersome and loses the word's cultural resonance.
Key Quotes
"מאוטובוס מזדקרות שתי סטודנטיות צעירות - פרגיות שיצאו לרשות הרבים לתהות על קנקנו של עולם" — מ. מררי, על המשמר, דצמבר 1952
Timeline
- Talmudic era: פַּרְגִּית appears in Berakhot 39a as a prized meat
- Medieval: Rashi identifies it as partridge/francolin; Nathan of Rome identifies it as young chicken, citing Arabic cognate
- 1931: Used in Hebrew translation of Horace to mean "guinea hen"
- Pre-1948: Various Hebrew writers use the word for different poultry
- Post-1948: Meaning standardized as "young hen" (pullet) in Modern Hebrew
- By 1952: Used metaphorically for "young woman" (probably influenced by English "chick")
- c.1970: Yehuda Avazi popularizes the culinary sense of boneless chicken thigh fillet in Tel Aviv grill restaurants
- Modern: The culinary sense dominates; standard translation remains contested
Related Words
- עוֹף — poultry, bird (general term)
- תַּרְנְגֹלֶת — hen (standard word for adult female chicken)
- אֶפְרוֹחַ — chick (baby bird)
- פַּרְדְּרִיָּה — partridge/francolin (Rashi's identification for פרגית)