Talk:shibboleth

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Latest comment: 1 year ago by Simplificationalizer in topic Columbia Guide to Standard American English
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Shibbolet = corn ear or river in Hebrew ?

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Hello, my Webster's 3rd New Int.al Dictionary (along with the WP:en article) gives also river for an origin to the word. Does not it seem an adequate pass-word to be asked from fugitives on the banks of the Jordan when they wanted to cross ?...

A possible recent exemple of shibbolet : I have read in a newspaper that, during a Lebanese strife, Arafat's soldiers were obliged (by Christian militians, if I remember well...) to say the word tomatisha ( = tomato), and were dispatched if they pronounced tomatisa...Can anybody confirm this ? (question transferred to the discuss. page of the WP:en article)

signé Arapaima, a french user Arapaima 17:38, 22 July 2009 (UTC)Reply

Columbia Guide to Standard American English

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In the Columbian Guide to Standard American English, in the entry for, for example, "prophesize", they write: "prophesize (v.) is Substandard, apparently an error caused by a feeling that prophesy needs a suffix to be a real verb. To say or write prophesize is a shibboleth. In what sense are they using "shibboleth"? Simplificationalizer (talk) 02:07, 4 December 2022 (UTC)Reply