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Hebrew calendar

Hebrew calendar

7.1
A calendar used by Jewish people that uses lunar months and adds leap months to match the seasons
  • noun
  • /ˈhiːbruː ˈkælɪndər/
translation icon : calendario hebreo
  • I should point out there's much controversy about pinpointing Jubilee Years because they have been observed in Israel since ancient times, while no one is 100 percent certain about when they should occur on the modern Hebrew calendar.

Examples

  • The Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, falls on the first day of Tishrei in the Hebrew calendar.

  • Since it is pegged to the Hebrew calendar, it may occur any time from late November to late December.

    Academic text (1992)
  • As a side note, the Hebrew calendar was based on the Babylonian calendar, which in turn was based on the Sumerian calendar.

    Blog text (3)
  • He prided himself on the dates, recording each entry according to the Hebrew calendar first, then the English.

    Fiction book (2001)
  • Since Noah's age is actually given in the Hebrew calendar, which is one of these self-correcting calendars, then he really was 600 modern years old at the time of the flood (according to the Bible).

    Blog text (3)
  • Passover is celebrated in the spring according to the Hebrew calendar, marking the Exodus from Egypt.

  • In the Hebrew calendar, each month begins with the sighting of the new moon.

Synonyms

Jewish calendar
vsHebrew calendar
1 6.7

A calendar used by Jewish people with months based on the moon and extra months to keep seasons the same

has identical system and dating but uses a different traditional name

Surface Forms

Morphology

Hebrew + calendar

The meaning is directly compositional: 'Hebrew' identifies a cultural/ethnic/adjectival affiliation and 'calendar' denotes a system for organizing months and years, so a learner who knows both words will infer it is the calendrical system used by Hebrews/Jewish people. While specific technical details (lunar basis, epoch year) are specialized knowledge, the core referent is predictable from the constituents and cross-linguistically transparent.

Etymology

Hebrew calendar comes from the long Jewish tradition of counting months by the moon and sometimes adding an extra month so the months stay in the same season. It also counts years from a traditional date for the world's creation ('3761 BC'), so it often gives different dates from the 'Gregorian calendar' and is used to set Jewish holidays.