קוֹרוֹנָה (korona) — corona; coronavirus
Etymology
The word קוֹרוֹנָה is the Latin word for "crown." Seventeenth-century English astronomers began using it to name the luminous halo visible around the sun during a total eclipse. The term migrated from astronomy into biology in 1968, when a group of eight virologists jointly proposed naming a newly identified family of pathogens "coronaviruses" — because their characteristic spike-protein envelope, visible under an electron microscope, resembles the solar corona. The proposal was published in Nature on November 16, 1968.
The column by Elon Gilad uses the coronavirus pandemic as a springboard to trace the Hebrew vocabulary of contagious disease. The biblical word מַגֵּפָה (plague, epidemic) derives from the root נ.ג.פ. (to strike) and appears throughout the Hebrew Bible, though not always with the modern meaning of infectious disease. It was only in the nineteenth century that scientists identified the microscopic agents behind epidemics.
The German scientist Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg coined the term בַּקְטֶרְיָה (bacteria) in 1838 from the Greek diminutive βακτήριον (little staff), because the first observed bacteria were rod-shaped. The term was Hebraized by the Jewish physician Yehuda Leib Katzenelson in 1887 as מְתָגִים (metegim), after the biblical cantillation mark מֶתֶג whose shape is a small vertical stroke. The word חַיְדָק (haydak — germ/microbe) was coined by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda in December 1895 as a calque of the French microbe (micro + bios), blending Hebrew חַי (alive) and דַּק (tiny).
Smaller still than bacteria, viruses were identified in the 1890s and named וִירוּס from the Latin for "poison." The Hebrew calque נָגִיף was introduced around 1930, apparently by editors of the agricultural journal HaSadeh, and was standardized as נְגִיף by the Academy of the Hebrew Language in 2005. The word הֶסְגֵּר (quarantine) was coined by activist Chaim Michal Michlin around 1890, first appearing in the newspaper HaTzfira in quotation marks with the foreign-language gloss "quarantine." The vaccine-related term חִסּוּן was coined by physician Yitzhak Ben Yosef Tovim in 1896 based on the biblical חֹסֶן (Jeremiah 20:5).
Key Quotes
"לפי דעתם של שמונה וירולוגים, הנגיפים האלה חברים בקבוצה שעד כה לא זוהתה אשר הם מציעים שתקרא קורונה-וירוסים" — Nature, November 16, 1968
"ביפו גזרו גזרת 'הסגר' (קאראנטין) לעת עתה לעת מצער על כל האוניות הבאות מאלכסנדריה" — HaTzfira, 1891 (first attested use of הסגר)
Timeline
- 17th century: Corona applied to the solar halo by English astronomers
- 1838: Ehrenberg coins bacteria (Greek: little staff)
- 1875–1891: Hebrew press attempts various terms for microscopic agents (תולעים דקים, רמשים דקים, המזיקים, etc.)
- 1887: Katzenelson coins מְתָגִים for bacteria
- ~1890: Michlin coins הֶסְגֵּר (quarantine)
- December 1895: Ben-Yehuda coins חַיְדָק (microbe/germ)
- 1896: Tovim coins חִסּוּן (vaccination) and נַסְיוּב (serum)
- ~1930: נָגִיף coined for virus (standardized נְגִיף by Academy in 2005)
- November 16, 1968: Eight virologists name the coronavirus family in Nature
- 2019–2020: קוֹרוֹנָה becomes a household word in Hebrew during the COVID-19 pandemic
Related Words
- מַגֵּפָה — epidemic, plague (biblical; root נ.ג.פ.)
- חַיְדָק — bacterium/microbe (coined by Ben-Yehuda, 1895)
- נְגִיף — virus (coined ~1930, standardized 2005)
- הֶסְגֵּר — quarantine (coined ~1890)
- חִסּוּן — vaccination (coined 1896)
- נַסְיוּב — serum (coined 1896)