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דת

dat

Phonetics · dat

Religion.

Register: formalPart of speech: noun (f.)Hebrew (עברית, Ivrit)Origin: Persian

What does it literally mean — and what do Israelis actually mean?

What it literally means

Literal: "(the king's) law, decree."

היא לא שומרת דת, אבל מכבדת את המסורת.Hi lo shomeret dat, aval mechabedet et ha-masoret.She doesn't observe religion, but she respects tradition.

What Israelis actually mean

Religion, faith — dat yahudit = Judaism.

חופש הדת מוגן בחוק.Chofesh ha-dat mugan ba-chok.Freedom of religion is protected by law.

Where did this word come from?

From Old Persian dāta- "law" — literally "that which is set/laid down" (root dā- "to put, place"). Encyclopaedia Iranica documents the borrowing into Late Babylonian, biblical Aramaic (dāt), Syriac, Armenian — and Hebrew, "owing to Darius' legal reforms." Biblical attestations cluster in the Persian-period books: Esther (~20×), Ezra 7 (Aramaic, "the law of your God and the law of the king" side by side), Daniel 6. Originally "royal decree/law"; in rabbinic and later Hebrew it became the standard word for "religion."

Register & social context

The neutral universal word for "religion." Note the Israeli social spectrum dati / masorti / chiloni is real, not a binary.

Root & morphology

Loan; derivatives: dati (religious), datiyut; the modern antonym: chiloni (secular).

Influences & contact languages

  • Persian· contactOld Persian dāta-, "law" — borrowed "owing to Darius' legal reforms" (Encyclopaedia Iranica).
  • Jewish Aramaic (Ancient Judeo-Aramaic)Imperial/biblical Aramaic dāt mediated the word across the empire (Ezra 7).

Associated places · modern location anchors

Which places are associated with this word?

One place carries a documented relationship to this word.

Land geometry: Natural Earth 1:50m via world-atlas. Pins mark modern localities or representative regional anchors stored on Atlas place records, not historical borders and not reconstructed positions. · Sources & methods

Hear it in the wild

היא לא שומרת דת, אבל מכבדת את המסורת.

Hi lo shomeret dat, aval mechabedet et ha-masoret.

She doesn't observe religion, but she respects tradition.

Phonetics · Hi lo shomeret dat, aval mechabedet et ha-masoret.

חופש הדת מוגן בחוק.

Chofesh ha-dat mugan ba-chok.

Freedom of religion is protected by law.

Phonetics · Chofesh ha-dat mugan ba-chok.

What English speakers get wrong

Hebrew's everyday word for "religion" is an imperial Persian bureaucratic term — there is no native ancient Hebrew word for "religion" as a category; also dati vs masorti vs chiloni is a real social spectrum in Israel, not a binary.

What lives next to this word?

פרדסpar-DESגזברgiz-BAR

See the language constellation

Follow this word into a guided story

How a word crossed three languages

Sources & review

Reviewed 2026-07-30

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