Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An aromatic gum resin similar to myrrh, produced by certain Asian and African shrubs or trees of the genus Commiphora.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A name given to two aromatic gum-resins, similar to myrrh, but weaker.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun An unidentified substance mentioned in the Bible (Gen. ii. 12, and Num. xi. 7), variously taken to be a gum, a precious stone, or pearls, or perhaps a kind of amber found in Arabia.
- noun A gum resin of reddish brown color, brought from India, Persia, and Africa.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Probably an aromatic
gum likebalsam that was exuded from a tree, probably one of several species in the genus Commiphora.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun aromatic gum resin; similar to myrrh
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word bdellium.
Examples
-
It may be noticed that the resemblance of the manna to coriander seed was not in the color, but in the size and figure; and from its comparison to bdellium, which is either a drop of white gum or
-
"bdellium" mentioned by Moses in Genesis is a perfuming gum, resembling frankincense, if not identical with it.
The Art of Perfumery And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants George William Septimus Piesse 1851
-
Parivartan Sharma/Reuters Smoke from bdellium rose from a roadside stall in New Delhi, Tuesday.
India in Pictures 2011
-
(Soundbite of "Crazy ABC's") Mr. ROBERTSON: "A" is for aisle, B is bdellium, C is for czar, and if you see him would you mind telling him ...
-
In the Bible the word “bdellium” is used to describe the appearance of Manna.
-
And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.
-
And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.
-
They were brimful of myrobalan, bdellium, saffron, and violets.
Salammbo 2003
-
The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Hav'ilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.
Genesis 2. 1999
-
¶ And the manna was as coriander seed, and the color thereof as the color of bdellium.
Numbers 11. 1999
pspealman commented on the word bdellium
It may be a gum. The word comes from the King James Bible where the corresponding word in Hebrew is בדלח (ḇəd�?lah) - but this is only used twice in the bible and occurs no where else but there.
The kicker is that bible scholars have offered arguments that it referrers to many things - but no one can say definitively what it is. Since the definition is lost but the word is still in use it is an ultimately unstranslatable word.
December 8, 2008
jaime_d commented on the word bdellium
From "A Field of Snow on a Slope of the Rosenberg" by Guy Davenport.
January 19, 2010
chained_bear commented on the word bdellium
"The use of myrrh, balsam, and bdellium* is documented from the early third millennium B.C. When Howard Carter examined the mummy of Tutankhamen, interred almost exactly a century earlier than Ramses, he found that the corpse had been treated with coriander and resins.
" * Bdellium is a gum resin that oozes from one of several shrubs of the genus Commiphora. The dried product resembles impure myrrh."
--Jack Turner, _Spice: The History of a Temptation_ (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 147
December 2, 2016
chained_bear commented on the word bdellium
"The book of Genesis does not actually say much about the aromatic flora of paradise. The only spice mentioned is bdellium, a fragrant resin supposedly common to a land called Hevilath, which lies on the border of paradise (Genesis 2:12). Hevilath is said to be watered by the Phison and so is usually identified with India. From these few hints Christian writers endowed the Garden of Eden with a specifically aromatic as opposed to merely flowery atmosphere."
Paul Freedman, Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2008), 91-92
November 28, 2017