noun (formal)
1 an old idea, principle or phrase that is no longer accepted by many people as important or appropriate to modern life:
the crumbling of old political shibboleths
2 a custom, word, etc. that distinguishes one group of people from another
ORIGIN From a Hebrew word meaning 'ear of corn'. In the Bible story, Jephthah, the leader of the Gileadites, was able to use it as a test to tell which were his own men, because foreigners found the 'sh' sound difficult to pronounce.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
Where does this definition of shibboleth come from?
This entry for shibboleth is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Does shibboleth appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — shibboleth appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
