I can't believe you left out the most obvious feminine singular word that ends with -ot: "zot".
"Steinberg expands the root meaning "to join" to other words - ach אח - "fireplace", where people gather around, and achu אחו "reeds" (later "meadow"), which were used to make ropes for binding. However, modern scholarship has determined that both of these words were borrowed from Egyptian."
Since Hebrew and Egyptian are both Afro-Asiatic languages, maybe they are cognates in the long run.
""Under the influence of the German and British use of the word "sister" for "nurse," the Hebrew is now using the word achot (sister) also to mean "nurse.""
Isn't that because hospitals in Europe used to be run by monasteries and convents?
"The absolute form of the plural never appears in the Tanach. Achayot does appear in the Tanach, but only in the later books."
What exactly do you mean by "absolute form of the plural". It seems like you contradict yourself: First you say "never", then you say "in the later books".
Interesting about zot - hadn't thought about it. I wouldn't be surprised if it originally was pronounced "zat" (or "zet"), but haven't seen that anywhere.
From what I've seen, the Egyptian words don't seem to be related to "brother" or "join", but we can look into that more.
I assume that nuns were the nurses, so that makes sense. The question is why did the word enter Hebrew so late? What were nurses called in Ben-Yehuda's time?
"Absolute form of the plural" means without smichut, and without any possesive suffixes. The absolute form does not exist, but we can determine what the absolute form was from the other appearances. Achayot shows up (in Divrei HaYamim and Iyov) but not in the absolute form. I can see how what I wrote might have been confusing.
Does this mean that the plural for "av" used to be "avawot" before becoming "avot"?
I'd also like to draw an analogy to Arabic: whereas "ab" gets a broken plural "ābā'", both "umm" and "uḫt" get an additional consonant inserted, just like in Hebrew: "ummahāt", "aḫawāt". Moreover, "aḫ" gets both the new consonant and the feminine-singular ending in its plural: "iḫwaḧ".
(Inserting consonants, afaik, is irregular and uncommon and thus remarkable in both of the languages.)
Dave,
Over Shabbat I was thinking about my previous comment. Zot is spelled zayin-alef-tav and doesn't use the vav-tav ending.
Avawot - interesting, it certainly could be.
Zot - My wife pointed out the same thing to me on shabbat. So while it doesn't end with vav-tav, the cholam could be from the influence of those other words.
ACH sheli, as someone who loves Hebrew, if there is a blog I should be reading, it's this one. Someone should have told me about this years ago. I have a lot to catch up on.
While Zot has its masculine counterpart in "zeh," however there is also another form of "this" and that is "zu"--spelt: zayin shuruq-vav. Thus, can you offer your readers any commentary in this regard?
I think more importantly, זאת is not a noun and so is less likely to have the standard requirement of three root-consonants. Biblically, we also have זֹה, apparrently with the same meaning. In later Hebrews we get זֹו.
And then, as Bartalmei says, there is also זוּ, but what it means precisely is debated. I explored זו and what both medieval and modern lexicographers had to say about it in my essay on Ps 62:12. In particular, the dispute is whether the word means "this" (demonstrative pronoun) or "which" (relative pronoun). I.e. is עם זו גאלת "the nation which you redeemed" or "this nation you redeemed". The masoretic punctuation (cantillation marks) usually follows the assumption (which is Bartalmei's) that it is demonstrative with conjunction from the previous word. Ibn Janah seems to have read it mostly as "which", Kimhi as "this"; BDB both, Kohler/Baumgartner both, Even Shoshan "which", etc.
Re: Avawot, etc. Some theorise the root of אב as being ה. Certainly in Aramaic we get the plural אבהן...
Interesting, I didn't know there were different opinions about the meaning of "zu". I was always taught that "zu" is similar to "asher", while "zo" is similar to "zoth".
If zu can indeed mean "this", it would mean it's both feminine and masculine.
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