you can’t imagine how confused I was reading an article just now that kept referring to shibboleth.
“Why would a random website refer to a doper as if readers are meant to know who that is!?”
FTR
Shibboleth:
A word or pronunciation that distinguishes people of one group or class from those of another.
a. A word or phrase identified with a particular group or cause; a catchword.
b. A commonplace saying or idea.
3. A custom or practice that betrays one as an outsider.
I am familiar with it - I remember first encountering it in an old, paperback edition of Ripley’s Believe it or Not, 2nd Edition. It presented the word with text that sounded like a sideshow barker.
I would describe it as a cool, obscure word that word-types really dig and are likely to know about.
I encountered it as a user name, belonging to a gay woman. I knew it as a vague biblical reference until I saw that episode of West Wing and then understood the context.
I learned it from Ripley’s too, with the example of a plant that was carried on Santo Domingo by what we’d call today Death Squads. A person’s life would depend on if they gave the French or Spanish name for it.
Perhaps a lot of Dopers of a certain age got their start reading Ripley’s Believe It Or Not and MAD magazine, proving the theory that a mind must first be warped before it can be expanded.
It was in one of those Word of the Day calendars for me back in 1996 or 1997. It’s a good word though, I like it and I use it sometimes, but it’s uncommon enough that it tends to muck up conversations.
I learned about it when I was in the Masonic Lodge – it’s one of the passwords in the lower degrees, I don’t remember which one. That was the first time I heard the biblical story, too. None of the other Masons knew whether the Gileadites made up the word “shibboleth” or whether it existed with some other meaning.
"The story behind the word is recorded in the biblical Book of Judges. The word shibboleth in ancient Hebrew dialects meant ‘ear of grain’ (or, some say, ‘stream’). Some groups pronounced it with a sh sound, but speakers of related dialects pronounced it with an s.
In the story, two Semitic tribes, the Ephraimites and the Gileadites, have a great battle. The Gileadites defeat the Ephraimites, and set up a blockade to catch the fleeing Ephraimites. The sentries asked each person to say the word shibboleth. The Ephraimites, who had no sh sound in their language, pronounced the word with an s and were thereby unmasked as the enemy and slaughtered."
