Gimel

By: Richard Gottheil, Isaac Broydé

Third letter of the Hebrew alphabet, so called, perhaps, because the shape of the letter in the ancient West-Semitic script bears a resemblance to the neck of the camel. In pronunciation gimel corresponds to the Greek γ or to the English g in "go." It is classified by the grammarians among the four palatals (), and being, with the exception of the letter י, the softest of this group, it is often interchanged with the harder ones ב and ק; for instance,  and , "to cover," "to protect";  and , "to run up and down." According to the Masorah, gimel belongs to the letters , which have a double pronunciation, softened or aspirated, and hard or unaspirated. In the grammatical division of the letters, gimel is included in the eleven which occur only as root sounds, and never as functional sounds. As a numeral, it has the value 3. In Arabic written in Hebrew script ג represents the ghain (gh) and sometimes jim (j).

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GIMZO:

By: Emil G. Hirsch, Frants Buhl

A city in the Judean plain; conquered by the Philistines according to II Chron. xxviii. 18; present village of Jimzu, southeast of Lydda.

Bibliography:

Neubauer, Géographic du Talmud, p. 98.

GIMEL.—The third letter of the Heb. alphabet, and as such used in the 119th Psalm to designate the 3rd part, each verse of which begins with this letter.

gē´mel, gim´el (גּ, ג): The 3rd letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and used as such to designate the 3rd part of Ps 119; transliterated in this Encyclopedia with the dagesh as “g”, and without the dagesh as “gh” (aspirated “g”). It came also to be used for the number three (3), and with the dieresis for 3,000. For name, etc., see ALPHABET.