A Victorian-era penant with the Abracadabra talisman in the center.

Ploughing.

Pasture.

Plunder or booty! Arrr! (...well the "Arrr!" is implied. It is booty afterall.)

And a few others that would really have to be shoehorned in so I will not include them here...

Besides, if it were the verb דבר and meant "to speak" it would also have to be Hebrew, rather than Aramaic (or a late borrowing from Hebrew). Generally, "to speak" in Aramaic is either אמר /amar/ or מלל /malel/ depending on circumstance and context (they're pretty much like how "say" and "speak" are used in English, respectively).





So where did this myth come from?





It's actually one of several competing Aramaic etymologies for the phrase that arose in the late 1800s. In short, where the talisman is quite well known in Greek and Latin from as early as the 3rd century, some unknown authority in the past 200 years stated that it was in Aramaic, so a number of authors figured, "Well then there must be some combination that works!" (And you can imagine the creative results.)





The earliest mentions of "Abracadabra" being Aramaic that I can find was in a publication from the 1890s.





The Cyclopaedia of Biblical, theological, and ecclesiastical literature, Volume 1 (1891) By John McClintock and James Strong gives a number of convoluted theories on Abracadabra's origins, but says the following about the Aramaic:

Abracadabra -- [... Grotefend] derives it from the Persian Abrasax [sic] (the name of the Supreme Being) and the Chaldee [Aramaic] word דִּבּוּרָא (the utterance), so that the meaning of it is, "a divine oracle." [...] See Abraxas (p.27)

However, when we look up Abraxas, we find another long explanation about what that word means, followed by... guess what? ... more Aramaic:

Abraxas -- [...] The latest suggestion is that it is the Aramaic for זו עוקא רבא "this is the great seal" read backwards. (p.33)

Abraxas, Abrasax, Abracadabra, Ablathanabla, Abanathabla - Various terms on Gnostik charms --see Rivers of Life, i, p 511. [The translations are much disputed. Probably they are Aramaic sentences: Abrak ha dabra, "I bless the deed": Ablaṭ ha nabla, "I give life to the corpse": Abana thabla, "Thou our father leadest"-- E D .] The Persian sun-god was seen in the Greek letters Abraxas, representing in numbers 365 -- the days of the solar year. This word, placed on an amulet or seal, exorcised evil spirits, and was explained by Semites as meaning Abra-Sheda-bara, "go out bad spirit out [sic]" [or perhaps better, Abrak ha āsh "I bless the man." -- E D .]

The word ABRACADABRA is a combination of short Aramaic words.

Abracadabra, which originally is an Aramaic sentence meaning, "Fade away as this word is fading."

More plausible, perhaps, is derivation from Aramaic abhadda kedabrah, "vanish at this word," a suitable incantation for warding off maladies.

Abracadabra was a contracted quotation from the Psalmist's call on God (Ps. 144; 6) to "cast forth lightning" (in Hebrew, b'rok barak) to scatter the evil ... On the contrary, abracadabra was the actual (Aramaic or Greek) name of a powerful demon.

May be from the Aramaic: Avada Kedavra, "May the thing be destroyed."

In this week's column, Cecil gives three explanations for the term "Abracadabra", but none of them is the one I had heard while growing up. I am an Orthodox Jew, and I had always been told that it comes from the Hebrew "Abra", meaning "I will create", "Ke-dabra", meaning (roughly) "as I speak"...i.e., invoking the divine powers of creation-through-speech as in Genesis.

A source for the "Abracadabra" etymology: in "The Book of Words" (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1993, p. 11), Rabbi Lawrence Kushner mentions that "The Aramaic for 'I create as I speak' is avara k'dvara, or, in magician's language, abracadabra."

"Abracadabra" is NOT Aramaic.

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If you're interested in actually learning some stuff that *is* Aramaic,

be sure to check out AramaicNT.org

It's a project that I am steadily building up that includes Galilean Aramaic lessons on YouTube.

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Labels: abracadabra, bad aramaic