מַשֶּׁהוּ (mashehu) — something / anything

Etymology

The word מַשֶּׁהוּ is one of the most important grammatical words in Modern Hebrew, serving as the indefinite pronoun for things ("something," "anything"). Its history goes back to Talmudic Hebrew, where the phrase מַה שֶׁהוּא ("ma she-hu," literally "what that it is") functioned as a vague referent for an unspecified thing. The phrase appears in Mishna Zevachim (8:2) and elsewhere in early rabbinic literature. Over time it underwent grammaticalization — the process by which a free phrase fuses into a single grammatical item — and appears as the single written word מַשֶּׁהוּ in the Babylonian Talmud (Tractate Shabbat 100a). The word continued in use through all subsequent periods of Hebrew writing and also entered Yiddish as a near-synonym of עֶפֶּס (epes, "something").

When the Hebrew language revival began in earnest in the late 19th century, writers naturally reached for מַשֶּׁהוּ wherever they would have used Yiddish epes. But Hebrew lacked the full system of indefinite pronouns that Yiddish and European languages possessed. A word for "someone" (corresponding to Yiddish עֶמֶץ, emets) was needed. Someone — possibly Eliezer Ben-Yehuda — observed that מַשֶּׁהוּ contained the interrogative מָה (what) at its base, just as Russian chto-to (something) contains chto (what) and German irgendwas (something) ends in was (what). In those languages, swapping "what" for "who" (kto-to in Russian, irgendwer in German) yields "someone." Following this logic, substituting מִי (who) for מָה in מַשֶּׁהוּ should yield "someone." Ben-Yehuda used the phrase "מִי שֶׁהוּא" in his newspaper HaTzvi in 1886, and within a few years it was being written as a single word: מִשֶּׁהוּ. This spelling is most likely a coinage of journalist Nahum Sokolow, who used it in HaTzfira from 1902.

Once מִשֶּׁהוּ existed, the suffix שֶׁהוּ had been liberated as what linguist Arnold Zwicky (2010) calls a "libfix" (לִיבְפִיקְס) — a bound morpheme extracted from a compound that goes on to generate new words independently. On the model of Russian kak-to and German irgendwie ("somehow"), Hebrew coined אֵיכְשֶׁהוּ (somehow, attested from 1946); on the model of "which/some," אֵיזֶשֶׁהוּ (some [kind of], attested from 1929); on "where," אֵיפֹשֶׁהוּ (somewhere, attested from 1952); on "when," מָתַיְשֶׁהוּ (sometime, attested from 1948); and on "whither," לְאַנְשֶׁהוּ (to somewhere, attested from 1949). The oldest member of the family, כָּלְשֶׁהוּ (some, any amount of), predates the others: it appears as "כל-שהו" from 1902 and as a single word from 1912.

Key Quotes

"זה יקרב לשם מה שהוא קדשים בקדשים מין בשאינו מינו" — Mishna Zevachim 8:2 (early attestation of the phrase)

"מחפורות... שנמצאו במקום אחד שבנכסי המלכות, אע״פ שהם מוחזקים בידי מי שהוא, הרי הן חוזרות לרשות מלכות" — Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, HaTzvi, 1886 (first use of "מִי שֶׁהוּא" as indefinite pronoun for a person)

"אין הם יודעים מה שמכיר עתה כל מי שיש לו עסק בחנוך, ואפילו עסק כלשהו" — Y.Y. Glass, HaZman, 1912 (early attestation of כָּלְשֶׁהוּ as one word)

"ואין להגידד שדבריו חסרים יסוד איזשהו" — Yaakov Horowitz, Ketuvim, 1929 (early attestation of אֵיזֶשֶׁהוּ as one word)

Timeline

• Mishna period (1st–3rd century CE): Phrase "מה שהוא" used as indefinite referent in rabbinic literature
• Talmud Bavli (completed ~6th century CE): מַשֶּׁהוּ written as single word (Shabbat 100a)
• Medieval and Early Modern periods: Word in continuous use in Hebrew writing; also adopted into Yiddish
• 1886: Ben-Yehuda uses "מִי שֶׁהוּא" as indefinite human pronoun in HaTzvi
• 1902: Nahum Sokolow uses מִשֶּׁהוּ as single word in HaTzfira; "כל-שהו" also attested this year
• 1912: כָּלְשֶׁהוּ as single word in HaZman
• 1929: אֵיזֶשֶׁהוּ as single word in Ketuvim
• 1946: אֵיכְשֶׁהוּ attested as single word
• 1948: מָתַיְשֶׁהוּ attested as single word (Al HaMishmar)
• 1949: לְאַנְשֶׁהוּ attested in Ama Talmi's debut novel Le'et Ohalim
• 1952: אֵיפֹשֶׁהוּ attested as single word

Related Words

• מִשֶּׁהוּ — someone; coined on the pattern of מַשֶּׁהוּ by Ben-Yehuda (1886) / Sokolow (1902)
• כָּלְשֶׁהוּ — some, any (amount); earliest single-word attestation (1912)
• אֵיכְשֶׁהוּ — somehow (1946)
• אֵיזֶשֶׁהוּ — some kind of (1929)
• אֵיפֹשֶׁהוּ — somewhere (1952)
• מָתַיְשֶׁהוּ — sometime (1948)
• לְאַנְשֶׁהוּ — to somewhere (1949)
• לִיבְפִיקְס — libfix; the linguistic term for the productive suffix -שֶׁהוּ