halutz means A pioneer, especially one of the early Jewish immigrants to Palestine. It carries an Arena rating of 1363, earned across 80 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, halutz ranks #5,543 of 17,149 for Most Exacting Words, #6,860 of 17,138 for Most Incisive Words, #7,444 of 17,151 for The Improbable, #7,461 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books.
Why “halutz” is a great word
HALUTZ — [Noun] A pioneer, especially one of the early 20th-century Jewish immigrants to Palestine who undertook the agricultural and settlement work foundational to the Zionist project. Borrowed from Hebrew חָלוּץ (khalúts), from the root ח־ל־ץ (kh-l-ts), meaning 'to draw off, to remove, or to be strong'; the term was applied to pioneers in the early 20th century Zionist movement. Unlike a “settler,” a neutral term for establishing residence, or a “colonist,” often an agent of imperial enterprise, a halutz was an ideologue of the soil, motivated by secular redemptive labor and national rebirth. It is the calloused hand draining a malarial swamp, the silhouette planting a cypress grove on a barren hillside, and the austere geometry of a kibbutz tent-line at dawn—a testament to the belief that a homeland must be built, molecule by molecule, from the dust upward.
Etymology
Borrowed from Hebrew חָלוּץ.
noun
- A pioneer, especially one of the early Jewish immigrants to Palestine.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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