בדיל (badil) — tin (the metal)
Etymology
The word בדיל, meaning tin (the metal), was coined by Moshe Sharett, Israel's second prime minister and one of the most prolific Hebrew coiners of the modern revival. The coinage appears in the phrase "minimum lo achid ki im badil" in his publication Sha'ar HaUmot. Sharett's linguistic method was characteristic: words grew from the practical needs of governance and modern life, grounded in classical Hebrew roots, and loyal to the sound of the language.
Abba Eban described Sharett's linguistic fastidiousness as inseparable from his deeper personality: "He invested all his desires for harmony and precision into his anxiety for linguistic precision, for he grasped like no other the reciprocal connection between the outward and inner dimensions of things." Sharett himself explained his approach: "My words were always born from the need of work and the need of life to call things by their Hebrew name — with loyalty to sound on one hand, and moving hand in hand with the developments around me on the other."
Sharett was personally responsible for — or deeply involved in distributing — a long list of modern Hebrew words, including לווין (satellite), פיחות (devaluation), נוהל (procedure), יומרה (pretension), ביון (intelligence), and תגבורת (reinforcement). He was scrupulous about attribution, writing to newspapers to clarify that he had merely popularized words coined by others, such as אתגר (by Ephraim Broida), פער (from IDF usage), and מידע — whose attribution was contested between Sharett, Yitzhak Avinery, and the Academy of the Hebrew Language, all having arrived at the same coinage independently. He also helped popularize דיילת (flight attendant), coined by Yitzhak Shenhar, by persuading El Al to adopt it.
Key Quotes
"תמיד נולדו המילים שלי מתוך צורך העבודה וצורך החיים לקרוא לדברים בשמם העברי. תוך נאמנות לצליל מצד אחד והליכה יד ביד עם ההתפתחות סביב מאידך" — משה שרת
"קפדנותו הלשונית לא היתה סתם קו-אופי יוצא דופן" — אבא אבן, הקדמה לכתבי משה שרת, עמ' 16
Timeline
- 1948–1954: Sharett served as Israel's first Foreign Minister, coining many Hebrew terms for diplomacy and governance
- 1953: Sharett writes to Ha'aretz clarifying the origin of the word פער (gap), attributing it to earlier use before IDF adoption
- 1954–1955: Sharett served as Prime Minister
- 1957: The word יעיל (effective/efficient) appears in Sharett's Asia travel diary — possibly its first print use
- 1964 (July): Public debate in Ma'ariv and Al HaMishmar over attribution of מידע; Sharett relinquishes any claim
Related Words
- מידע — information; attributed to Sharett, then acknowledged as earlier coined by Yitzhak Avinery and the Academy
- דיילת — flight attendant; coined by Yitzhak Shenhar, popularized by Sharett via El Al
- אתגר — challenge; coined by Ephraim Broida, distributed by Sharett
- פער — gap; from IDF/earlier usage, popularized by Sharett
- דרכון — passport; coined by A. Broida at Sharett's request
- אשרה — visa; coined by A. Broida at Sharett's request