shibboleth

• n.パスワード; （キリスト教の聖書の）テストの言葉; 独特の習慣

ヘブライ語のshibboleth、麦束から。 この言葉の現在の意味は、聖書に登場するギレアド人とエフライム人という2つの民族が戦争をし、エフライム人は敗れて逃げたが、2つの民族は見た目は似ていて区別がつかなかったが、アクセントが異なり、エフライム人はshの音を発音できなかったので、ギレアド人は関所を通るすべての人に、正しく発音できないshibbolethという言葉を言わせたという話に由来する。そこで、ギレアド人は関所を通過する者すべてにシブボレトという言葉を発音させ、正しく発音できなかった者は逮捕された。こうしてこの言葉の意味が導き出された。中国における東西南北のアクセントの違いに似ている。

shibboleth

shibboleth: [14] Hebrew shibbōleth meant ‘stream’. According to the Bible, the Gileadites used it as a password, for they knew their enemies the Ephraimites could not pronounce the sh properly (‘And it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay, then they said unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right’, Judges 12:5–6).

In 17th-century English it came to be applied generically to any word used as a test of pronunciation, particularly as a sign of belonging to a group, and hence by extension to any catchword or slogan adopted by a group, and this eventually evolved into the modern sense ‘outmoded slogan, practice, etc still adhered to’.

shibboleth (n.)

late 14c., the Hebrew word shibboleth, meaning "flood, stream," also "ear of corn;" in Judges xii:4-6. It was the password used by the Gileadites to distinguish their own men from fleeing Ephraimites, because Ephraimites could not pronounce the -sh- sound. Hence the figurative sense of "watchword" (first recorded 1630s), which evolved by 1862 to "outmoded slogan still adhered to." A similar test-word was cicera "chick pease," used by the Italians to identify the French (who could not pronounce it correctly) during the massacre called the Sicilian Vespers (1282).

1. It is time to go beyond the shibboleth that conventional forces cannot deter.

伝統的な力では止められない古いしきたりから抜け出す時が来た。

2.They would say to him,Then say, Shibboleth .

6は彼に言った。

3.Maritime nations still respond automatically to the shibboleth of the freedom of the seas.

海洋国家は依然として「四海の自由」の号令に従う。