צִפְלוֹן (tsiflon) — weakling, skinny person

Etymology

Modern Hebrew has a rich vocabulary for describing thin people: רָזֶה (thin, neutral), כָּחוּשׁ (lean, literary), צָנוּם (dried up), שָׁדוּף (withered), גָּרוּם (bony), שְׁחִיף (skeletal), and צִפְלוֹן (weakling, a thin and feeble person). Most of these come from the Bible; צִפְלוֹן is the youngest and most colloquial.

The word entered Hebrew through IDF military slang, borrowed from Russian tsiplenok (цыплёнок), meaning "chick" (baby bird), which in Russian slang is used as a nickname for a weak or puny person. The Russian word likely circulated among Hebrew-speaking soldiers — many of whom had Russian immigrant parents — and was eventually clipped: the final -ok (diminutive suffix in Russian, perceived by Hebrew speakers as a regular ending or as the Hebrew suffix -ik) was dropped, yielding the Hebrew form צִפְלוֹן.

The first documented Hebrew use is from a 1975 gossip column in Ha'Olam Hazeh, which referred to the pop singer Zvika Pick — who was about to be drafted — as someone from whom "it's hard to imagine they'll make a combat soldier, profile or no profile." The word continued to circulate as a rare colloquialism through the late 1970s and 1980s. A 1989 Ma'ariv piece referred to a 17-year-old as "what among friends would be called a tsiflon," and a 1962 Ha'Olam Hazeh slang glossary had already defined it as "someone whose clothes hang on them."

The article in which צִפְלוֹן is embedded covers the full spectrum of Hebrew words for thinness and their origins. רָזֶה goes back to the Bible (Ezekiel 34:20; Numbers 13:20). Both שָׁדוּף and צָנוּם come from Pharaoh's dream in Genesis 41:23, where they describe withered ears of grain — their exact meaning in context is uncertain, though both were interpreted as "dry/withered" and used synonymously in Haskalah Hebrew as translations of German dürr. כָּחוּשׁ first appears in the Talmud (Pesachim 76a). גָּרוּם is a 20th-century coinage from Aramaic garma (bone), first attested in 1907. שְׁחִיף began as a biblical hapax legomenon (Ezekiel 41:16) meaning something like "thin plank," was popularized by Y.L. Gordon's 19th-century poem "The Tip of a Yod," and was shortened from the phrase shaḥif atzamot (bone-thin) to שחיף alone by the 1950s.

Key Quotes

"קשה לי להאמין שיעשו מאחד ציפלון כמוהו חייל קרבי" — "רחל מרחלת" (Ha'Olam Hazeh gossip column), 1975

Timeline

• Biblical period: רָזֶה, שָׁדוּף, צָנוּם attested in the Hebrew Bible
• Talmudic period: כָּחוּשׁ first attested
• 1907: גָּרוּם first attested in the press
• 1959: שְׁחִיף attested as standalone word in Ha'Olam Hazeh personal ad
• 1975: First documented use of צִפְלוֹן in Ha'Olam Hazeh
• 1989: Word attested in Ma'ariv as recognizable colloquialism

Related Words

• רָזֶה — thin (neutral, general; biblical)
• כָּחוּשׁ — lean, gaunt (literary register; Talmudic)
• גָּרוּם — bony (20th-century coinage from Aramaic)
• שְׁחִיף — skeletal (from biblical hapax, popularized 19th–20th century)
• צָנוּם — dried-up, withered (biblical; now literary)
• שָׁדוּף — blighted, withered (biblical; now literary)