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 אֲחִים (undistinguishible from אחים / brothers, I guess.)

Shimon Zilberman's dictionary translates it as: meadow, lea, pasture.

This אָחוּ 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 אָחוּ is the word כָּר, or כָּר-מַרְעֶה; it's exactly the same כר which is also "pillow".

There is also the word אָפָר (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:

• מַרְעֶה means just "pasture" or "grassland", as far as I understand.
• כָּר-מַרְעֶה means the same, as well as just the second meaning of the word כר
• אָחוּ is a meadow.
• And let אָפָר 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.