אָחוּ
Although English word "meadow" is in a quite frequent use, somehow its Hebrew
equivalent is not. After living in Israel for more than a decade, I didn't know
this word. :-|
Anyway, here is the word:
אָחוּ, and according to
Even-Shoshan (pretty old though, I have one printed back in 1960) the plural is
אַחִים (undistinguishible
from אחים
/ brothers, I guess.)
Shimon Zilberman's dictionary translates it as: meadow, lea, pasture.
This אחו
is apparently a segoalte noun (!), and as such its stress falls
on the אָ.
Well, it's third root letter must be Vav, which is a rare case, especially with
segolate - that's probably why it has such a strange vocalization. The word
seems to be a big exception from many morphological rules, anyway.
Another word that appears aside
אחו is the word
כַּר,
or
כַּר-מִרְעֶה;
it's exactly the same
כר
which is also "
pillow".
There is also the word
אֲפָר (found in old
Even-Shosan), with the same meaning, but I guess this word is really archaic,
for a number of reasons.
So here we go:
- מִרעה
means just "pasture" or "grassland", as far as I understand.
- כר-מִרעה
means the same, as well as just the second meaning of the word
כר
- אחו is a
meadow.
- And let
אֲפָר to be translated as lea, just because
both words seem to be a little archaic / rarely used... well, at least they
seem to me. :)
שמורת
אחו בנימינה - I've been here many times, but still, somehow haven't
learned the word. This place is beautiful, and Zikhron-Yaakov with its
דרך היין and all the nice restaurants is really close.