Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The 16th letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The sixteenth letter of many Semitic alphabets/abjads (Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic and others).

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the 16th letter of the Hebrew alphabet

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Hebrew ‘ayin, eye, ayin; see עyn in Semitic roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Proto-Semitic *ʿayn- (“eye”).

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Examples

  • Although this looks strange today, it was a common practice in the transcription of Hebrew words among Italian and Spanish-Portuguese Jews of the period, and it indicates that the guttural Semitic consonant ayin, which is pronounced with a pharyngeal contraction in Arabic and Middle Eastern Hebrew, was still being given this value, or an approximation of it, in southern Europe long after it was lost to Ashkenazic Jews.

    unknown title 2009

  • ( "ayin", "yod", "reish") we turn to the Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, with an appendix containing the biblical Aramaic, based on the Lexicon of Wm. Gesenius,

    Netvouz - new bookmarks 2009

  • "ayin," instead of "alef" - is actually a great play on words for phyllo dough (that you'd use for puff pastries, usually meat or vegetable-filled).

    The Blog Herald 2009

  • "Watchers moved through the streets, polluted with blood, so that none could touch their garments is spelt" ayin "," vav "," reish ".

    Netvouz - new bookmarks 2009

  • If you speak to some Modern Orthodox, Lubavitch or Traditional Jews of a certain age, you may see that they -- more prevalently than others -- use the phrase "kneine harah" (Yiddish) or "bli ayin harah" (Hebrew).

    Shira Hirschman Weiss: Re-examining The 'Evil Eye' Shira Hirschman Weiss 2010

  • The rabbi apologized to her and explained how ayin harah, as it was first mentioned in the Torah, refers to jealousy: We do not want to make others jealous of us which causes their "evil eye" to look at us, so we need to be humble and not flaunt our blessings.

    Shira Hirschman Weiss: Re-examining The 'Evil Eye' Shira Hirschman Weiss 2010

  • There are many different schools of thought in Judaism about the ayin harah, or "evil eye."

    Shira Hirschman Weiss: Re-examining The 'Evil Eye' Shira Hirschman Weiss 2010

  • There are many different schools of thought in Judaism about the ayin harah, or evil eye.

    Shira Hirschman Weiss: Re-examining The 'Evil Eye' Shira Hirschman Weiss 2010

  • The rabbi apologized to her and explained how ayin harah, as it was first mentioned in the Torah, refers to jealousy: We do not want to make others jealous of us which causes their "evil eye" to look at us, so we need to be humble and not flaunt our blessings.

    Shira Hirschman Weiss: Re-examining The 'Evil Eye' Shira Hirschman Weiss 2010

  • There are so many different schools of thought in Judaism about the ayin harah.

    Shira Hirschman Weiss: Re-examining The 'Evil Eye' Shira Hirschman Weiss 2010

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