From Wikipedia, "Pottery":
"throwing" (forming and raising the walls of the piece)
Maybe "throw" goes back even earlier than "ter." In Aramaic, there's the word: tiray (tet, reish, yud)
I can tell you that upon arriving in Israel for the first time, one of the things that enchanted me most was seeing the letter pe on the dreidels in place of the letter shin - the letters obviously standing for "a great miracle happened here (po)" as opposed to "a great miracle happened there (sham)" that we had in the old country. I thought (and still think) that it was very reflective of Zionism and coming home... and now to know that the whole thing is based on a German gambling game! Oh well. Do you know when the Israeli version with the letter pe come into play?
may I say that a yiddish word does not come from a german word but from an old german word (from the time when yiddish was born in german speaking countries). the links are indirect to modern german words. in the frame of the yiddish language, "dreydl" has to be related to the verb "dreyen" and not to the modern german "drehen".
Someone gave us a gift of dreidel salt and pepper shakers. Unfortunately, the two pieces are identical, making it hard to figure out which is which. Too bad they didn't put a Shin on one (for salt) and a Pe on the other.
Of course "turn" itself is related to that same root as torque and throw. As is turnip, tournament (indirectly); and tornado was probably influenced by it.
Another note: I have long wondered whether the meaning of תור, as in "turn" in a game context, was influenced by the assonance with "turn"... Any insight, Dave?
I wrote about tor and turn here:
http://balashon.blogspot.com/200...006/06/
tor.html
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