Jew (word) Jew (word) The English term Jew originates in the Biblical Hebrew word "Yehudi", meaning "from the Kingdom of Judah", or "Jew". It passed into Greek as "Ioudaios" and Latin as "Iudaeus", which evolved into the Old French "giu" after the letter "d" was dropped. A variety of related forms are found in early English from about the year 1000, including "Iudea", "Gyu", "Giu", "Iuu", "Iuw", and "Iew", which eventually developed into the modern word. According to the Book of Genesis, Judah (, "Yehudah") was the name of the fourth son of the patriarch Jacob. During the Exodus, the name was
Old French child" represents the old oblique (Latin accusative "īnfāntem"); the Old French nominative was "li enfes" (Latin "īnfāns"). There are some cases with significant differences between nominative and oblique forms (derived from Latin nouns with a stress shift between the nominative and other cases) in which either it is the nominative form that survives or both forms survive with different meanings: In a few cases in which the only distinction between forms was the nominative "-s" ending, the "-s" was preserved in spelling to distinguish otherwise-homonymous words. An example is "fils" "son" (< Latin nominative "fīlius"), spelled to distinguish it from