תירס
ti-RAS
Corn, maize (biblical: Tiras, son of Japheth).
What does it literally mean — and what do Israelis actually mean?
What it literally means
Literal: a grandson of Noah.
צלינו תירס על האש במסיבת פתיחה.Tzalinu tiras al ha-esh be-mesibat pitcha.We grilled corn on the fire at the opening party.
What Israelis actually mean
Corn — a word that maps a 500-year misunderstanding.
הילדים אוהבים קלח תירס עם חמאה.Ha-yeladim ohavim kalach tiras im chem'a.The kids love corn on the cob with butter.
Where did this word come from?
Tiras is a son of Japheth in Genesis 10:2; the 15th-century commentator Isaac Abarbanel identified biblical Tiras with the Turks ("Tiras is Persia, that is, Turkish"). When maize arrived from the Americas, Europe named it "Turkish wheat" (German Türkenkorn, Italian grano turco); Baruch Linda first described it in Hebrew in 1789 (Reshit Limudim) as חיטי טורקיא ("Turkish wheat"). In the 1880s Hebrew writers Hebraized this to חיטי תירס ("wheat of Tiras" — i.e., Turkey via the Bible), Ottoman-Palestine farmers adopted it in the 1890s, and speech clipped it to plain תירס. Klein objected to the Tiras=Turkey equation (Targum reads Thrace) — the scholarly grumble. Gilad's timeline is sourced; the Abarbanel identification is traditional exegesis, not linguistics.
Register & social context
Universal. Not an ancient Hebrew word for corn — maize is a New World crop; the Bible couldn't have named it.
Root & morphology
A proper name repurposed: Tiras, son of Japheth (Genesis 10:2) → "wheat of Tiras" → tiras.
Influences & contact languages
- Hebrew (עברית, Ivrit)The proper name Tiras, son of Japheth (Genesis 10:2), repurposed in the 1880s calque "wheat of Tiras."
- German· contactCalqued from German Türkenkorn, "Turkish wheat" — Europe's mislabel for American maize.
- Turkish· contactThe "Turkish" trade label Europe attached to maize — picked up by Abarbanel's Tiras=Turkey exegesis.
Associated places · modern location anchors
Which places are associated with this word?
2 places carry documented relationships to this word. These associations are unordered, so no traveled path is inferred.
Hear it in the wild
צלינו תירס על האש במסיבת פתיחה.
Tzalinu tiras al ha-esh be-mesibat pitcha.
We grilled corn on the fire at the opening party.
הילדים אוהבים קלח תירס עם חמאה.
Ha-yeladim ohavim kalach tiras im chem'a.
The kids love corn on the cob with butter.
What English speakers get wrong
"Tiras" is not an ancient Hebrew word for corn — maize is a New World crop; the Bible couldn't have named it. The word is a 19th-century pun on Genesis 10:2.
What lives next to this word?
See the language constellation
Follow this word into a guided story
Sources & review
Want to use this word? Understand it inside a full sentence — Open Baba →