tefillah

Pronunciations

tefillah (te-FEE-luh) listen
tefillah (TFEE-luh) listen
tefillah (tfee-LAH) listen

Definitions

  • n. Prayer, prayer services, or an individual prayer.

Example Sentences

  • "We had tefillah on Shabbat."

    Listen to recordings of this sentence: ( Recording 1)
  • "Morning tefilot are at 7 A.M. during the week and at 9 A.M on Shabbat." (Glinert)

Languages of Origin

  • Textual Hebrew
  • Yiddish

Etymology

  • TH תְּפִלָּה tfilá > Y תּפֿילה tfile

    • Who Uses This

      • Religious: Jews who are engaged in religious observance and have some Jewish education
      • Camp: Jews who attend or work at a Jewish overnight summer camp

      Regions

      • North America
      • Australia / New Zealand
      • Great Britain
      • South Africa

      Dictionaries

      • The JPS Dictionary of Jewish Words, by Joyce Eisenberg and Ellen Scolnic, (Philadelphia, 2001).
      • The Joys of Hebrew, by Lewis Glinert (New York, 1992).
      • Dictionary of Jewish Usage: A Popular Guide to the Use of Jewish Terms, by Sol Steinmetz (Lanham, MD, 2005).
      • Yiddish and English: A Century of Yiddish in America, by Sol Steinmetz (Tuscaloosa, 1986).

      Alternative Spellings

      t'fillah, tefila, tefilla, tefilah, t'fila, t'filla, t'filah, tfilah, tfila, tfillah, tefilos, tefillos, tfile, tfileh

Notes

  • plural: 'tefilot' or 'tefilos'

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