כִּידוֹן (kidon) — javelin; (colloquial) bicycle handlebar

Etymology

The word כִּידוֹן appears nine times in the Hebrew Bible but has no convincing Semitic etymology — it cannot be derived from any known Hebrew or Semitic root, and it is absent from all Semitic sister languages except for a handful of relatively late Akkadian tablets. Those tablets, found at the temple of the god Baal in the city of Emar (modern Syria, 13th–12th centuries BCE) in the upper Euphrates region, contain the word katinnu describing a copper weapon — exactly as כִּידוֹן in the Bible describes a copper weapon in 1 Samuel 17:5-6: "And he had a helmet of bronze on his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail… and a כִּידוֹן of bronze between his shoulders." The Akkadian spelling and the geographical and temporal context of the Emar tablets make it virtually certain that katinnu was borrowed from the Hurrian language — the non-Semitic, non-Indo-European language spoken by the Hurrians who inhabited that region from roughly the 25th to the late 13th century BCE, when they disappeared. By an unknown route, this Hurrian word also found its way into Biblical Hebrew.

What the biblical כִּידוֹן actually was, translators and commentators could not agree. The ancient Greek translation (Septuagint) renders its various occurrences as "spear," "small battle-spear," "shield," or "armor" depending on the passage. The Latin Vulgate follows similar variations. Medieval commentators disagreed: David Kimhi (Radak) thought it was a spear that could also carry a banner, or perhaps a defensive shoulder shield; Rashi, commenting on Joshua 8:18, glossed it as "espede" — Old French for sword (modern épée). The Haskalah era largely settled on "spear" or "javelin," and Ben-Yehuda was certain: "There is absolutely no doubt that its basic meaning is a type of spear," he wrote in volume five of his dictionary (1914).

The Dead Sea Scrolls (discovered in the late 1940s) provided a posthumous correction. The War Scroll (published 1955) distinguishes כידון from רמח (spear) by giving their measurements separately: "In their hands a spear (רמח) and a sword (כידן). The length of the spear: seven cubits… The swords: pure iron, smelted and refined… the length of the sword: one and a half cubits, the width: four fingers." One and a half cubits is sword-length, not spear-length — vindicating Rashi's medieval reading over Ben-Yehuda's modern one. But by the time this discovery was published, "javelin" had been the established meaning for decades, and no one proposed changing it.

Meanwhile, a separate usage developed entirely independently. The French word for the handlebar of a bicycle, guidon, was borrowed into Hebrew as כִּידוֹן — exploiting the near-homophony between guidon and the Hebrew word. Mordechai Patsanovsky published an article in 1942 using כִּידוֹן for bicycle handlebars, and the word has been in use for at least that long. The Academy of the Hebrew Language periodically reminds the public that "there is no such thing" as a bicycle כִּידוֹן — the correct term is הֶגֶה or מוֹט הַהֶגֶה — but the usage persists. The academy's complaint is somewhat undercut by the fact that the biblical כִּידוֹן is itself a non-Semitic loanword, as the columnist notes.

Key Quotes

"וְכִידוֹן נְחֹשֶׁת בֵּין כְּתֵפָיו" — 1 Samuel 17:6 (Goliath's armor description)

"בעצם משמעותו אין שום ספק שהוא כעין רמח" — Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, dictionary vol. 5, 1914

"ובידם רמח וכידן... ואורך הכידן אמה וחצי ורוחבו ארבע אצבעות" — Dead Sea Scrolls, War Scroll (1QM), published 1955

Timeline

• 25th–13th c. BCE: Hurrians inhabit northern Syria/southeastern Turkey; language includes the ancestor of כִּידוֹן
• 13th–12th c. BCE: Akkadian katinnu (copper weapon) attested at Emar; borrowed from Hurrian
• Biblical period: כִּידוֹן in Hebrew, nine occurrences; original meaning uncertain
• c. 200 CE: Aramaic translations and Talmudic period — no clarification on the word's meaning
• Medieval: Rashi glosses כִּידוֹן as espede (sword); Radak glosses it as spear
• 19th c.–1914: Haskalah and revival era establishes כִּידוֹן = javelin/spear; Ben-Yehuda confirms in his dictionary
• c. 1920: כִּידוֹן adopted for the javelin-throwing athletic event
• WWII era: כִּידוֹן adopted for the bayonet
• 1942: First documented use of כִּידוֹן for bicycle handlebars (from French guidon)
• 1955: War Scroll published; suggests כִּידוֹן meant sword, not spear — ignored in practice
• Present: Academy insists bicycle כִּידוֹן is incorrect; usage continues regardless

Related Words

• רֹמַח — spear; the word the War Scroll distinguishes from כִּידוֹן
• חֶרֶב — sword; the meaning apparently indicated by the War Scroll measurements
• הֶגֶה — steering wheel/handlebar; the Academy's preferred term for the bicycle part
• קוֹרְקִינֵט — scooter; similarly borrowed from French (trottinette) in the Mandate period
• הַטָּלַת כִּידוֹן — javelin throw; the athletic event that uses the established word