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
Phonological history of French unstressed syllables. However, there was a strong tendency (especially beginning in the Middle French period, when the formerly strong stress accent was drastically weakened) to even out these alternations. In certain cases in verbal paradigms unstressed variant was imported into stressed syllables, but mostly it was the other way around, with the result that in Modern French all of the numerous vowels can appear in unstressed syllables. Changes that occurred due to contexts that developed during the Old French stage or later are indicated in the "Modern French" column. In particular, "+#" indicates a word-final context in modern French, which