A shibboleth ( ; ) is any custom or tradition—usually a choice of phrasing or single word—that distinguishes one group of people from another. Historically, shibboleths have been used as

password A password, sometimes called a passcode, is secret data, typically a string of characters, usually used to confirm a user's identity. Traditionally, passwords were expected to be memorized, but the large number of password-protected services t ...

s, ways of self-identification, signals of loyalty and affinity, ways of maintaining traditional segregation, or protection from threats. It has also come to mean a moral formula held tenaciously and unreflectingly, or a

taboo A taboo is a social group's ban, prohibition or avoidance of something (usually an utterance or behavior) based on the group's sense that it is excessively repulsive, offensive, sacred or allowed only for certain people.''Encyclopædia Britannica ...

Origin

The term originates from the Hebrew word (), which means the part of a plant containing grain, such as the ear of a stalk of wheat or rye; or less commonly (but arguably more appropriately) 'flood, torrent'.

Biblical account

The modern use derives from an account in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' Ephraimites, whose dialect used a different first consonant. The difference concerns the Hebrew letter '' shin'', which is now pronounced as (as in ''shoe''). In the

Book of Judges The Book of Judges is the seventh book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. In the narrative of the Hebrew Bible, it covers the time between the conquest described in the Book of Joshua and the establishment of a kingdom in the ...

chapter 12, after the inhabitants of Gilead under the command of Jephthah inflicted a military defeat upon the invading

tribe of Ephraim According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Ephraim (, ''ʾEp̄rayim,'' in Pausa, pausa: , ''ʾEp̄rāyim'') was one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. The Tribe of Manasseh, together with Ephraim, formed the Tribe of Joseph. It is one of the Ten L ...

(around 1370–1070 BC), the surviving Ephraimites tried to cross the river Jordan back into their home territory, but the Gileadites secured the river's fords to stop them. To identify and kill these Ephraimites, the Gileadites told each suspected survivor to say the word ''shibboleth''. The Ephraimite dialect resulted in a pronunciation that, to Gileadites, sounded like ''sibboleth''. In Judges 12:5–6 in the

King James Bible The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version (AV), is an Early Modern English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by ...

, the anecdote appears thus (with the word already in its current English spelling):

Phonetics of the biblical test

''Shibboleth'' has been described as the first "password" in Western literature but exactly how it worked is not known; it has long been debated by scholars of Semitic languages. It may have been quite subtle: the men of Ephraim were unlikely to be "caught totally napping by any test that involved some gross and readily detectable difference of pronunciation";. On a superficial reading the fleeing Ephraimites were betrayed by their dialect: they said ''sibbōleth''. But it has been asked why they did not simply repeat what the Gileadite sentries told them to say – "they surely would have used the required sound to save their necks", since peoples in the region could say both "sh" and "s". "We have yet to learn how the suspects were caught by the catchword". A related problem (akin to

false positive A false positive is an error in binary classification in which a test result incorrectly indicates the presence of a condition (such as a disease when the disease is not present), while a false negative is the opposite error, where the test resu ...

s) is how the test spared neutral tribes with whom the Gileadite guards had no quarrel, yet pinpointed the Ephraimite enemy. The Ford of River Jordan

Ephraim Avigdor Speiser therefore proposed that the test involved a more challenging sound than could be written down in the later biblical Hebrew narrative, namely the

phoneme A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...

(≈ English "th"). Present in archaic Hebrew (said Speiser) but later lost in most dialects, the Gileadites, who lived across a dialect boundary (the river Jordan), had retained it in theirs. Thus, what the Gileadite guards would have demanded was the password ''thibbōlet''. The phoneme is difficult for naive users – to this day, wrote Speiser, most non-Arab Muslims cannot pronounce the classical Arabic equivalent – hence the best the Ephraimite refugees could manage was ''sibbōlet''. Speiser's solution has had a mixed reception, but has been revived by Gary A. Rendsburg. John Emerton argued that "Perhaps he Ephraimitescould pronounce ''š'', but they articulated the consonant in a different way from the Gileadites, and their pronunciation sounded to the men of Gilead like ''s''". There is a range of ways of pronouncing the two phonemes. "An old clergyman of my acquaintance used to say 'O Lord, save the Queen' in such a way that it sounded o melike 'O Lord, shave the Queen'", and analogies could be found amongst Hebrew users in modern Lithuania and Morocco. Berkeley scholar Ronald Hendel agreed, saying the theory was supported by a document recently dug up near modern

Amman Amman ( , ; , ) is the capital and the largest city of Jordan, and the country's economic, political, and cultural center. With a population of four million as of 2021, Amman is Jordan's primate city and is the largest city in the Levant ...

. It tended to show that, across the Jordan, the pronunciation of the phoneme "sh" was heard as "s" by Hebrew speakers from the opposite side of the river. "This is why Gileadite ''šibbōlet'' is repeated by the Ephraimites as ''sibbōlet'': they simply repeated the word as they heard it". Other solutions have been proposed. David Marcus has contended that linguistic scholars have missed the point of the biblical anecdote: The purpose of the later

Judea Judea or Judaea (; ; , ; ) is a mountainous region of the Levant. Traditionally dominated by the city of Jerusalem, it is now part of Palestine and Israel. The name's usage is historic, having been used in antiquity and still into the pres ...

n narrator was not to record some phonetic detail, but to satirise the incompetence of "the high and mighty northern Ephraimites". "The shibboleth episode ridicules the Ephraimites who are portrayed as incompetent nincompoops who cannot even repeat a test-word spoken by the Gileadite guards".

Modern use

In modern English, a shibboleth can have a

sociological Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociology was coined in ...

meaning, referring to any in-group word or phrase that can distinguish members from outsiders. It is also sometimes used in a broader sense to mean

jargon Jargon, or technical language, is the specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity. Jargon is normally employed in a particular Context (language use), communicative context and may not be well understood outside ...

, the proper use of which identifies speakers as members of a particular group or

subculture A subculture is a group of people within a culture, cultural society that differentiates itself from the values of the conservative, standard or dominant culture to which it belongs, often maintaining some of its founding principles. Subcultures ...

. In

information technology Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data processing, data and information processing, and storage. Inf ...

, Shibboleth is a community-wide password that enables members of that community to access an online resource without revealing their individual identities. The origin server can vouch for the identity of the individual user without giving the target server any further identifying information. Hence the individual user does not know the password that is actually employed – it is generated internally by the origin server – and so cannot betray it to outsiders. The term can also be used pejoratively, suggesting that the original meaning of a symbol has in effect been lost and that the symbol now serves merely to identify allegiance, being described as "nothing more than a shibboleth". In 1956,

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...

Paul Samuelson Paul Anthony Samuelson (May 15, 1915 – December 13, 2009) was an American economist who was the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. When awarding the prize in 1970, the Swedish Royal Academies stated that he "h ...

applied the term ''shibboleth'' in works including ''

Foundations of Economic Analysis ''Foundations of Economic Analysis'' is a book by Paul A. Samuelson published in 1947 (Enlarged ed., 1983) by Harvard University Press. It is based on Samuelson's 1941 doctoral dissertation at Harvard University. The book sought to demonstrate a ...

'' to mean an idea for which "the means becomes the end, and the letter of the law takes precedence over the spirit." Samuelson admitted that ''shibboleth'' is an imperfect term for this phenomenon.

Examples

Under the Guard of the Ikon - The Reign of Terror on the Roumanian Frontier

Shibboleths have been used by different subcultures throughout the world at different times. Regional differences, level of expertise, and computer coding techniques are several forms that shibboleths have taken. There is a legend that before the

Battle of the Golden Spurs The Battle of the Golden Spurs (; ) or 1302 Battle of Courtrai was a military confrontation between the royal army of Kingdom of France, France and rebellious forces of the County of Flanders on 11 July 1302 during the 1297–1305 Franco-Flem ...

in May 1302, the Flemish slaughtered every Frenchman they could find in the city of

Bruges Bruges ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders, in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is in the northwest of the country, and is the sixth most populous city in the country. The area of the whole city amoun ...

, an act known as the Matins of Bruges. They identified Frenchmen based on their inability to pronounce the Flemish phrase , 'shield and friend', or possibly , 'friend of the Guilds'. However, many Medieval Flemish dialects did not contain the cluster ''sch-'' either (even today's

Kortrijk Kortrijk ( , ; or ''Kortrik''; ), sometimes known in English as Courtrai or Courtray ( ), is a Belgian City status in Belgium, city and Municipalities in Belgium, municipality in the Flemish Region, Flemish Provinces of Belgium, province of We ...

dialect has ''sk-''), and Medieval French rolled the r just as Flemish did. There is an anecdote in

Sicily Sicily (Italian language, Italian and ), officially the Sicilian Region (), is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe and is one of the 20 regions of Italy, regions of Italy. With 4. ...

that, during the rebellion of the

Sicilian Vespers The Sicilian Vespers (; ) was a successful rebellion on the island of Sicily that broke out at Easter 1282 against the rule of the French-born king Charles I of Anjou. Since taking control of the Kingdom of Sicily in 1266, the Capetian House ...

in 1282, the inhabitants of the island killed the French occupiers who, when questioned, could not correctly pronounce the Sicilian word 'chickpeas'. Following Mayor Albert's Rebellion in 1312

Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...

, Poles used the

Polish language Polish (, , or simply , ) is a West Slavic languages, West Slavic language of the Lechitic languages, Lechitic subgroup, within the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family, and is written in the Latin script. It is primarily spo ...

shibboleth ''Soczewica, koło, miele, młyn'' ('Lentil, wheel, grinds (verb), mill') to distinguish the German-speaking burghers. Those who could not properly pronounce this phrase were executed. ('Butter, rye bread and green cheese, whoever cannot say that is not a genuine Frisian') was a phrase used by the Frisian Pier Gerlofs Donia during a Frisian rebellion (1515–1523). Ships whose crew could not pronounce this properly were usually plundered and soldiers who could not were beheaded by Donia. Newspaper advertisements in 18th-century America seeking absconding servants or apprentices frequently used the shibboleth method to identify them. Since most runaways were from the British Isles originally, they were identified by their distinctive regional accents, e.g. "speaks broad Yorkshire". Studying a large number of these advertisements, Allen Walker Read noticed an exception: runaways were never advertised as having London or eastern counties accents. From this he inferred that their speech did not differ from the bulk of the American population. "Thus in the colonial period American English had a consistency of its own, most closely approximating the type of the region around London". Kanto-Daishinsai-to-Saitama-2

In Japan during the 1923 Kantō Massacre, in which ethnic

Koreans in Japan () are ethnic Koreans who immigrated to Japan before 1945 and are citizens or permanent residents of Japan, or who are descendants of those immigrants. They are a group distinct from South Korean nationals who have immigrated to Japan since t ...

were hunted down and killed by vigilantes after rumors spread that they were committing crimes, shibboleths were attested to having been used to identify Koreans. The Japanese poet Shigeji Tsuboi wrote that he overheard vigilantes asking people to pronounce the phrase ''jūgoen gojissen'' (). If the person pronounced it as ''chūkoen kochissen'', he was reportedly dragged away for punishment. Both Korean and Japanese people recalled similar shibboleths being used, including ''ichien gojissen'' (). Other strings attested to were ''ga-gi-gu-ge-go'' () and ''ka-ki-ku-ke-ko'' (), which were thought difficult for Koreans to pronounce. In October 1937, the Spanish word for parsley, , was used as a shibboleth to identify Haitian immigrants living along the border in the Dominican Republic. The Dominican dictator,

Rafael Trujillo Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina ( ; ; 24 October 1891 – 30 May 1961), nicknamed ''El Jefe'' (; "the boss"), was a Dominican military officer and dictator who ruled the Dominican Republic from August 1930 until Rafael Trujillo#Assassination, ...

, ordered the execution of these people. It is alleged that between 20,000 and 30,000 individuals were murdered within a few days in the Parsley Massacre, although more recent scholarship and the lack of evidence such as mass graves puts the actual estimate closer to between 1,000 and 12,168. During the German occupation of the Netherlands in

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, the Dutch used the name of the seaside town of Scheveningen as a shibboleth to tell Germans from Dutch ("Sch" in Dutch is analyzed as the letter " s" combined with the digraph "ch", producing the

consonant cluster In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...

, while in German "Sch" is read as the trigraph " sch", pronounced , closer to "sh" sound in English). Some American soldiers in the Pacific theater in World War II used the word ''

lollapalooza Lollapalooza () is an annual American four-day music festival held in Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park in Chicago. It originally started as a touring event in 1991, with Chicago becoming its permanent location beginning in 2005. Music genres i ...

'' as a shibboleth to challenge unidentified persons, on the premise that Japanese people would often pronounce both letters L and R as rolled Rs. In Oliver Gramling's ''Free Men Are Fighting: The Story of World War II'' (1942) the author notes that, in the war, Japanese spies would often approach checkpoints posing as American or Filipino military personnel. A shibboleth such as ''lollapalooza'' would be used by the sentry, who, if the first two syllables come back as ''rorra,'' would "open fire without waiting to hear the remainder". Another sign/countersign used by the Allied forces: the challenge/sign was "flash", the

"thunder", and the countersign "Welcome". This was used during

D-Day The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during the Second World War. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as ...

during

due to the rarity of the

voiceless dental fricative The voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to most English speakers as the 'th' in ''think''. Though rather rare as a phoneme among the world's languages, it is encount ...

(th-sound) and voiced labial–velar approximant (w-sound) in German. During

The Troubles The Troubles () were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted for about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it began in the late 1960s and is usually deemed t ...

in Northern Ireland, use of the name Derry or Londonderry for the province's second-largest city was often taken as an indication of the speaker's political stance, and as such frequently implied more than simply naming the location. The pronunciation of the name of the letter H is a related shibboleth, with Catholics pronouncing it as "haitch" and Protestants often pronouncing the letter differently. During the Black July riots of Sri Lanka in 1983, many Tamils were massacred by Sinhalese youths. In many cases these massacres took the form of boarding buses and getting the passengers to pronounce words that had at the beginning (like 'bucket') and executing the people who found it difficult. In Australia and New Zealand, the words "fish and chips" are often used to highlight the difference in each country's short-i vowel sound �and asking someone to say the phrase can identify which country they are from. Australian English has a higher forward sound close to the y in happy and city, while New Zealand English has a lower backward sound � a slightly higher version of the a in about and comma. Thus, New Zealanders hear Australians say "feesh and cheeps", while Australians hear New Zealanders say "fush and chups". A long drawn out pronunciation of the names of the cities

Brisbane Brisbane ( ; ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and largest city of the States and territories of Australia, state of Queensland and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia, with a ...

and

Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...

rather than the typically Australian rapid "bun" ending is a common way for someone to be exposed as new to the country. Within Australia, what someone calls "

devon Devon ( ; historically also known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel to the north, Somerset and Dorset to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Cornwall to the west ...

", or how he names the size of beer he orders can often pinpoint what state he is from, as both of these have varied names across the country. In Canada, the name of Canada's second largest city,

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

, is pronounced by English-speaking locals. This contrasts with the typical American pronunciation of the city as . In the United States, the name of the state

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, th ...

comes from the Spanish , meaning 'snow-covered'. Nevadans pronounce the second syllable with the "a" as in "trap" () while some people from outside of the state can pronounce it with the "a" as in "palm" (). Although many Americans interpret the latter back vowel as being closer to the Spanish pronunciation, it is not the pronunciation used by Nevadans. Likewise, the same test can be used to identify someone unfamiliar with southwest

Missouri Missouri (''see #Etymology and pronunciation, pronunciation'') is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it border ...

, as the city of Nevada, Missouri is pronounced with the "a" as in "cape" (). During the

Russo-Ukrainian War The Russo-Ukrainian War began in February 2014 and is ongoing. Following Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, Russia Russian occupation of Crimea, occupied and Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, annexed Crimea from Ukraine. It then ...

(2014–present), Ukrainians have used the word (a type of Ukrainian bread) to distinguish between Ukrainians and Russians.

Furtive shibboleths

A ''furtive shibboleth'' is a type of a shibboleth that identifies individuals as being part of a group, not based on their ability to pronounce one or more words, but on their ability to recognize a seemingly innocuous phrase as a secret message. For example, members of

Alcoholics Anonymous Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is a global, peer-led Mutual aid, mutual-aid fellowship focused on an abstinence-based recovery model from alcoholism through its spiritually inclined twelve-step program. AA's Twelve Traditions, besides emphasizing anon ...

sometimes refer to themselves as "a friend of Bill W.", which is a reference to AA's founder, William Griffith Wilson. To the uninitiated, this would seem like a casual – if off-topic – remark, but other AA members would understand its meaning. Similarly, during

, a homosexual US sailor might call himself a " friend of Dorothy", a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment of a stereotypical affinity for Judy Garland in '' The Wizard of Oz''. This code was so effective that the Naval Investigative Service, upon learning that the phrase was a way for gay sailors to identify each other, undertook a search for this "Dorothy", whom they believed to be an actual woman with connections to homosexual servicemen in the Chicago area. Many cruise lines still host "Friends of Dorothy" meetings for LGBT guests to gather. Likewise, homosexuals in Britain might use the cant language

Polari Polari () is a form of slang or Cant (language), cant historically used primarily in the United Kingdom by some actors, circus and fairground performers, professional wrestlers, merchant navy sailors, criminals and prostitutes, and particula ...

Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Fau ...

used an explicit shibboleth to conceal a furtive shibboleth. In '' The Innocents Abroad'' he told the Shibboleth story in seemingly "inept and uninteresting" detail. To the initiated, however, the wording revealed that Twain was a freemason. "Fourteen Words", "14", or "14/88" are furtive shibboleths used among white supremacists in the Anglosphere.

In art

Colombian conceptual artist Doris Salcedo created a work titled '' Shibboleth'' at

Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery in London, housing the United Kingdom's national collection of international Modern art, modern and contemporary art (created from or after 1900). It forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Live ...

, London, in 2007–2008. The piece consisted of a 548-foot-long crack that bisected the floor of the Tate's lobby space. Salcedo said of the work:

References

Notes

Citations

External links

{{Commons category, Shibboleth Authentication methods Gilead Hebrew words and phrases in the Hebrew Bible Ethnic cleansing Book of Judges