שִׁדְרוּג (shidrug) — upgrade, re-grading

Etymology

The word shidrug belongs to the verbal pattern known as binyan shiph'el (שִׁפְעֵל), a form that was originally Aramaic rather than native Hebrew. In Aramaic, shiph'el functions like the Hebrew causative hiphil. A handful of shiph'el verbs entered mishnaic Hebrew — shikhlel (to perfect), shiʿbed (to enslave), shikhrer (to free) — and these remained as isolated words for centuries.

The revival of spoken Hebrew created pressure for new vocabulary, and in 1896, the young Joseph Klausner proposed in Ha-Tsevi that the shiph'el pattern be used productively to coin new words. The idea gained little traction at first, but by mid-century a cluster of shiph'el coinages had entered circulation — shikum (rehabilitation, 1944), shikhzur (reconstruction, archaeology term), shikhtev (rewriting) — and speakers began perceiving the pattern as carrying the meaning "redo, re-." This was not a planned development; it arose from the fact that many speakers were accustomed to the prefix re- in their European languages and felt the need for a Hebrew equivalent.

The Academy of the Hebrew Language consistently resisted this interpretation. In 1961, Zeev Sharaf, head of state revenues at the Treasury, wrote to the Academy proposing shidrug as a replacement for the foreign terms re-grading and re-stabilization that were in the news during a major government economic reform. The Academy's scientific secretary, Meir Medan, replied firmly: "The binyan shiph'el does not in any way express repetition or the meaning of the Latin/English 're-'. It is merely another form of the causative hiphil." The Academy's plenum had already approved the phrases diyrug me-khadash (re-grading from scratch) and khidush ha-diyrug (renewal of grading) months earlier.

Nevertheless, a reader writing to Davar in 1962 independently proposed shidrug, reasoning by analogy with other shiph'el coinages. The public adopted it rapidly. The pattern was already too deeply entrenched in speakers' intuitions: words like shikum, shikhzur, and shikhtev had burned the "redo" meaning into the linguistic consciousness, and shidrug was simply assimilated into that category. The Academy later formally endorsed numerous shiph'el coinages in this spirit, including shirtuakh (re-boiling, 1989), shitkhul (restart, 1992), and shirkuv (reassembly, 2014).

Key Quotes

"בניין 'שפעל', כלומר צורת הפועל בתוספת התחילית 'ש', אינו מביע בשום פנים את החזרה וההישנות ולא את מה שמביע re הלאטיני והאנגלי" — Meir Medan, Academy of the Hebrew Language, 1961

"חדושים יתרים ללא צורך - יש שנזקם מרובה לא פחות משבושים" — Yitzhak Avinery, Al ha-Mishmar, warning against shiph'el proliferation

Timeline

• Talmudic period: A handful of Aramaic shiph'el verbs enter mishnaic Hebrew (shikhlel, shiʿbed, etc.)
• 1896: Joseph Klausner proposes using shiph'el productively (proposal largely ignored)
• 1939: Shikhluf (rearrangement) coined by the Chemistry Terminology Committee
• 1944: Shikum (rehabilitation) coined by Daniel Leybel of Davar
• c. 1944: Shikhzur (reconstruction) coined in archaeological context
• 1950: Shikpel (to multiply/duplicate) coined by Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett
• 1961: Zeev Sharaf proposes shidrug; Academy rejects it, approves diyrug me-khadash instead
• 1962: Independent reader proposes shidrug in Davar; public adopts it rapidly
• 1989–2014: Academy formalizes additional shiph'el "redo" coinages

Related Words

• שִׁקּוּם — rehabilitation; one of the pioneering shiph'el "redo" words
• שִׁחְזוּר — reconstruction (archaeological)
• שִׁכְתּוּב — rewriting
• שִׁנּוּעַ — relocation (shiph'el but no "redo" meaning, showing the pattern's inconsistency)
• דַּרְגָּה — grade, rank; the root of shidrug