מְאֻזָּן וּמְאֻנָּךְ (me'uzan u-me'unakh) — horizontal and vertical
Etymology
The Hebrew words for "horizontal" (מְאֻזָּן, me'uzan) and "vertical" (מְאֻנָּךְ, me'unakh) were coined in 1894 by Yechiel Michel Pines in his science textbook Sefer ha-Koah ("Book of Force"). Pines was a significant figure in the early Hebrew revival: son-in-law of Ze'ev Yavetz and father-in-law of David Yellin, he coined dozens of words including עֲגַבְנִיָּה (tomato), כָּתוֹם and צָהוֹב (orange and yellow), and, together with Binyamin Szreszewski, the names of chemical elements — חַמְצָן (oxygen), מֵימָן (hydrogen), פַּחְמָן (carbon), סִידָן (calcium), זַרְחָן (phosphorus), and חַנְקָן (nitrogen).
Both מְאֻזָּן and מְאֻנָּךְ are loan translations (calques) from German: waagerecht (horizontal) comes from Waage (scales/balance), and lotrecht (vertical) comes from Lot (a plumb-bob — a builder's tool for establishing a vertical line, itself derived from an old German word for lead). Pines mirrored this structure: מְאֻזָּן from מֹאזְנַיִם (scales), and מְאֻנָּךְ from אֲנָךְ.
The word אֲנָךְ is itself ancient and contested. It appears only once in the Bible, in Amos 7:7-8: "I saw the Lord standing by a wall of אֲנָךְ, and in his hand a אֲנָךְ." Its meaning was already uncertain to ancient translators — the Septuagint rendered it as adamantinos (hard material, ancestor of the English "diamond"); the Peshitta followed suit; Targum Jonathan gave "judgment/justice"; and the Vulgate gave "plasterer's trowel" (trulla caementarii). The 10th-century Hebrew lexicographer Menahem ben Saruk proposed that it derived from the root נָכָה (to strike/destroy), meaning a wall of ruin — but his contemporary Dunash ben Labrat forcefully rejected this, arguing that אֲנָךְ matched the Arabic word for tin (anakh), from which builders make a plumb-bob, and that "I will set an anakh among my people Israel" echoed the idiom "I will set justice as a plumb-line" (Isaiah 28:17).
The etymology of אֲנָךְ traces back to Sumerian anna ("stone of the heavens," from an = sky/heaven + na = stone), a word for tin, which passed into Akkadian as anakku and then into Aramaic as anka. The Tosefta uses it for tin (or lead — the two metals were often confused in antiquity): "vessels covered with impure anakh remain pure."
The use of אֲנָךְ to mean "vertical" (as in the direction a plumb-bob hangs) was introduced by the Haskalah-era scientist Baruch Linda in his 1788 book Reshit Limudim, where he described a French physicist's experiment measuring Earth's gravitational pull in Peru: "He hung an anakh on the mountainside." Two decades later, in the expanded edition co-authored with Ze'ev Wolf (1810), Linda used אֲנָךְ as the opposite of אָפְקִי ("horizontal") — itself borrowed from Arabic in the 12th century. This usage of אֲנָךְ spread gradually, appearing in various Hebrew-language scientific publications of the 19th century, though competing terms like "line of gravity" and "upright line" also circulated.
Meanwhile, the Hebrew words for "horizontal" — אָפְקִי and מְאֻזָּן — also had precursors. The word אֹפֶק (horizon) entered Hebrew from Arabic (ufuq) in the 12th century, first used by Abraham bar Hiyya in his 1132 Tzurat ha-Aretz. From it came the adjective אָפְקִי, used by medieval and Haskalah writers alike. Pines chose to coin the new pair מְאֻזָּן / מְאֻנָּךְ as matching calques from German, and they became the standard modern terms.
Key Quotes
"כֹּה הִרְאַנִי וְהִנֵּה אֲדֹנָי נִצָּב עַל חוֹמַת אֲנָךְ וּבְיָדוֹ אֲנָךְ" — Amos 7:7 (only biblical occurrence of אֲנָךְ)
"ותלה אנך ברגל ההר, ומצא כי נטה האנך מקו האמצע ופנה מעט לצד ההר" — Baruch Linda, Reshit Limudim, 1788 (first use of אֲנָךְ for plumb-bob)
"שרשי האקציה יורדים ישר אַנָכִי למטה ואינם מתפשטים באופן אופקי" — Samuel Lipshitz Cohen, Ha-Tzvi, June 17, 1898 (early use of אֲנָכִי as "vertical")
Timeline
- ~750 BCE: Word אֲנָךְ appears in Amos 7:7-8; meaning already disputed
- 10th century CE: Menahem ben Saruk and Dunash ben Labrat debate the meaning of אֲנָךְ
- 11th century CE: Rashi and Ibn Janah accept Dunash's interpretation (tin → plumb-bob)
- 1132: Abraham bar Hiyya first uses אֹפֶק and אָפְקִי in Hebrew, borrowed from Arabic
- 1788: Baruch Linda uses אֲנָךְ in Reshit Limudim as a plumb-bob; first use as "vertical"
- 1810: Linda and Ze'ev Wolf use אֲנָךְ as the opposite of אָפְקִי in Reshit Limudim vol. 2
- 1875–1898: Various writers use different terms for "vertical" (line of the anakh, line of gravity, upright line)
- 1894: Yechiel Michel Pines coins מְאֻזָּן and מְאֻנָּךְ in Sefer ha-Koah as calques of German waagerecht / lotrecht
Related Words
- אֹפֶק — "horizon"; borrowed from Arabic in the 12th century
- אָפְקִי — "horizontal"; from אֹפֶק, borrowed from Arabic ufuqi
- אֲנָךְ — biblical: probably tin; medieval: plumb-bob; modern: vertical plumb-line
- מֹאזְנַיִם — "scales/balance"; root of מְאֻזָּן
- עֲגַבְנִיָּה — "tomato"; another coinage by Pines
- כָּתוֹם — "orange" (color); coined by Pines