רִשְׁרוּשׁ (rishroosh) — rustle; rustling sound

Etymology

The verb רִשְׁרֵשׁ (to rustle) and its noun form רִשְׁרוּשׁ (a rustle) are among the most celebrated coinages in Modern Hebrew because of the unusual way they entered the language. The word was invented by Haim Nahman Bialik — but he deliberately concealed his authorship and inserted it into someone else's text first, to let it take root before claiming it.

Bialik explained his method in a 1922 letter to the writer Daniel Persky: "I am wary of using my own coinages, even my own — instead I smuggle them first into the work of others and let them take root in literature, and only later, after their novelty has faded, do I bring them back under my own wing, and even then reluctantly, as if hesitating. For example, the verb 'rashresh,' for which I am the criminal who coined it — I simply invented it from the heart, God forgive me — and I first embedded it in one of Shofman's stories." The first appearance was in Shofman's story "Ketanot," published in Ha-Shilach in 1904: "his new robe foaming and rustling (מרשרש) on his full shoulders."

The word is an onomatopoeia — it mimics the sound it describes, like צִלְצוּל (ring) and זִמְזוּם (hum). But it also obeys Hebrew morphology: it belongs to the palpal binyan (פַּלְפֵּל), in which a two-consonant root is doubled, just as לִגְלֵג (to mock) derives from the root ל.ע.ג. The two relevant root consonants here are ר and ש from ר.ע.ש (noise, shaking). When linguist Yitzhak Avinery later asked Bialik whether he had consciously designed the word around that root, Bialik replied that he had not — "the word arose in my mind without my knowing its source and reason." Avinery remained convinced that the root ר.ע.ש was "below the poet's awareness," citing evidence from Bialik's children's poem "Ha-Na'ar Ba-Ya'ar": "The forest is noisy: rash-rash-rash (רש-רש-רש)."

After its quiet debut, the word appeared occasionally in the Hebrew press of Warsaw. Bialik then used it himself — for the only time — in his own coming-of-age story "Me-Ahorei ha-Gader" (1909). After that, the floodgates opened: A.N. Gnessin, Eliezer Steinman, S.Y. Agnon, and Shofman himself all used it within two years. Bialik wrote to Persky: "It did not occur to any of them to investigate the birth and origin of this word and ask: whose daughter are you? And to this day everyone uses it and everyone believes it is an ancient word, Midrashic or Talmudic." The word displaced the older Talmudic term אִוְשָׁה (a gentle rustling sound), which today is used almost exclusively in medicine for abnormal heart or lung sounds. By 1952 the derived slang term "מרשרשים" (rustlers) was being used for banknotes — by analogy with "מצלצלים" (jinglers) for coins — though this slang usage has since faded.

Key Quotes

"הנה הפעל 'רשרש', למשל, שאני אני הפושע הוא שחדשתיו, – פשוט בדיתיו מן הלב, אל נא ייסרני אלהים, – והבלעתיו ראשונה באחד מספורי שופמן" — Haim Nahman Bialik, letter to Daniel Persky, 1922

"ובאותם הרגעים... כשחלוקו החדש מבעבע ומרשרש על כתפיו המלאות" — Gershon Shofman, "Ketanot," 1904 (first appearance of the word; inserted by Bialik)

"על דעת אחד מהם לא עלתה לבדוק אחרי מולדתה ומוצאה של מלה זו... ועד היום הכל מחזיקים בה והכל סבורים שהיא מלה עתיקה, מדרשית או תלמודית" — Bialik, 1922

Timeline

• 1904: Bialik secretly inserts רִשְׁרֵשׁ into Gershon Shofman's story "Ketanot" in Ha-Shilach
• 1906: Zalman Shneour uses רִשְׁרוּשׁ in a story in Ha-Zman
• 1909: Bialik uses the word in his own story "Me-Ahorei ha-Gader" — the floodgates open
• 1910–1911: Gnessin, Steinman, Agnon, and Shofman all adopt the word
• 1922: Bialik reveals his authorship in a letter to Daniel Persky
• 1935: Yitzhak Avinery's "Dictionary of Bialik's Coinages" analyzes the word's structure
• 1950: Yosef Klausner publishes his account, correcting Bialik's imperfect memory of the story
• 1952: "מרשרשים" used as slang for banknotes (Ya'akov Parhi, Al Hamishmar, June 27, 1952)

Related Words

• אִוְשָׁה — gentle rustle (old Talmudic term displaced by רִשְׁרוּשׁ; now used only medically)
• צִלְצוּל — ringing sound (analogous onomatopoeia)
• זִמְזוּם — humming sound (analogous onomatopoeia)
• רַעַשׁ — noise; earthquake (root ר.ע.ש from which Bialik derived the word)
• לִגְלֵג — to mock (analogous palpal binyan formation from ל.ע.ג)